Master of Words, Mistress of Stone

[Pinions of Daedalion]

With many thanks to Karuka and Dawnmorrow, who helped proof-read and edit this manuscript before it was posted!



“See, this is why flesh isn’t suited to shaping,” Sigrun Kondrat remarked to nobody in particular. Stubby fingers worked her boomstick’s release mechanism. Springs snapped, and a heated metal casing whisked past her notched ears with the hiss of escaping steam. “It’s so... weak.”

Her cheerful brogue rolled down the slope of the dry embankment upon which she stood, through a night littered with the light of a waning half-moon. Drought cracks spread like tendrils of a spider’s web in the riverbed, a grim reminder to all who witnessed them of the toll that the Necromancer’s invasion had incurred. Once the Bards had sung of the farmlands between the Escaldor and the Elleduin as the breadbasket of all Althanas. Now, those rare travellers who walked the fringes of these newly-dubbed Eastern Plaguelands were far more likely to stumble upon a horde of wights than a farmhand or a herdbeast.

“Or a stray party of half-decomposed cadavers,” Sigrun continued the thought out loud. She had to pitch her voice to carry over the clamour of combat not a stone’s throw distant. “Wouldn’t you agree, Oby?”

Oby, or Obahyurur the Unwise, didn’t dignify her musing with an answer. Then again, when cornered by three zombies grasping and gouging at its body, even the most eloquent of speakers would have had trouble responding to such a half-articulated question. And Obahyurur, a black iron automaton two metres tall, was by no means an eloquent speaker. In fact, given that its creator had yet to decipher the mysteries of vocal cords or the means of infusing scrap metal with life, it didn’t speak at all. That didn’t deter its mistress Sigrun from yabbering away at it incessantly.

“Now, where was I?” She fumbled through her pockets for a spare cartridge, then remembered that she’d used the last one the day before. All she had left were the four on her belt. “Ah yes. Only amateurs work with flesh. Too easy to meld. Too frail for abuse. ‘Strewth!”

A grunt of effort rammed the wad of black powder and shot into place. She slammed the breech closed, tapping it once to ensure its integrity. Then the prosthetic iron fingers of her left hand curled around the dragon-belcher's oaken haft, bracing it in the direction of the walking dead grasping at her golem.

“Boom!” she called...

... only to realise that she hadn’t lit the fuse.

How could she forget? Not after two previous shots scarred the earth bank opposite! She’d even managed to blow the head from the first zombie before it had reached Oby, and its body still twitched spasmodically on the far side. Something in the star-speckled sky overhead crowed at her in raucous laughter.

“Oh shut up,” she told it, reaching into the pocket of her smithing apron. Her grimy hand re-emerged with a flint firestarter. She flicked it once to create flame, which soon took merry hold of the saturated hemp cloth, a small beacon of hope in the darkness.

“Boom!” she called again, and this time the boomstick responded to her touch.

Thunderous discharge tore the shadows asunder. Leaden fireball streaked through the night skies on a calculated ballistic trajectory, splitting them like a shooting star. Acrid fumes of smouldering black powder overwrote the noxious clouds of decay and rotten flesh.

The lighting was poor, but the angle good. The closest zombie lost its head in a disintegrating puff of blood and flesh, of shattered skull and splattering cranial matter. Its compatriot looked down at the sudden hole in its chest, the wound cauterised by a wreath of remnant flame. Promptly it collapsed to the pustulent ooze that seeped from the cracks in the corrupted ground.

That left just one shambler to face the dispassionate iron golem. The silvery splendour of its activation rune glowed across its beefy chest; ‘life’, it proclaimed to the world in the ancient dwarven tongue. But what Obahyurur granted to the undead construct flailing at its feet was not life. Sigrun had known the hypocrisy of the inscription when she’d carved it there. It spoke volumes that she didn’t care.

“Took you long enough, didn’t it?” she complained to her mute companion. Shouldering the steaming dragon-belcher across her back, she crossed the riverbed between them at an ungainly trot. The heavy leather apron she wore made it difficult to move with grace, and her legs were sore with the long journey south and east from Gunnbad. “Oh don’t mind that. It’ll wash off.”

She directed her last comment at the golem’s clumsy attempts to wipe dripping blood and gore from its immense fists. The pulverised remains of its erstwhile foe lay crushed into the dry earth at its feet.

“And you just had to go ahead and mash it into some sort of pulp, didn’t you. Even the elves wouldn’t dare serve this at one of their so-called banquets.”

Wrinkling her snub nose in a delicate grimace, she stepped with ginger care through the fleshy puddles of two of her opponents. On the slope above her, the headless third of their number still flopped from time to time like a fish out of water. But her interest lay in the unfortunate zombie that had taken her shot through the chest... the only one, in fact, with an intact skull.

“At least I only need two of these,” she grumbled, reaching down with pudgy fingers into a wide-open eye socket. She twisted, yanked, and then repeated the process again a hand’s span to the left. It took her five seconds to finish gathering the necessary ingredients.

“Well, that’s that,” she told Obahyurur, who was still trying to wipe its hands on the earth. Seeing as the golem’s arms extended twice the length of its stubby legs, a charitable person would likely have bet on it succeeding. But Sigrun had yet to work out how to design knees that would allow Obahyurur to bend over forwards without sacrificing bipedal stability. Thus every attempt could only end in dismal failure as iron palms swept over the riverside reeds. If the golem could manage an expression on its iron features, it might have been one of frustrated befuddlement. “Oh, Oby, stop that.”

Obahyurur turned to face her as she deposited her grisly trophies into her apron pocket. In turn she fished out a stained note of goat-skin parchment and a stick of graphite to accompany it. With swift exactitude she crossed out the penultimate item on her list, ending the stroke with a curled flourish. Then she peered close at the last line of the recipe.

“Hm,” Sigrun cogitated. “Now where in this blighted wasteland am I supposed to find the ashes of a long-lost muse?”

If only Obahyurur could have shrugged.

[Diadems of Promethion]

“But when that greedy thief got back to her lair and opened her pouch to check her spoils, boy was she in for a surprise!” The speaker paused for a heartbeat, letting the anticipation of his audience swell. He delivered the final flourish with all the joyous fanfare of an experienced raconteur. “The bard had replaced it all with lumps of coal!”

The cavernous common room erupted in raucous mirth. Bellowed laughter soared towards the naked, flame-scarred roof beams. Mercenary survivors of the strife in Scara Brae and Corone mingled with fresh elven graduates from the College Arcana at Beinost, fighting over the right to fresh wine. Many had long since lost their senses. Most would not recall the story he’d just finish telling. Four months after the Dread Necromancer’s defeat the Corpse War still threw up horrors that tested the limits of mortal sanity. Many of those who skirmished on the front lines could only find repose in the camaraderie and solace of taverns such as Tallman's.

“Drink, drink!” the call rose as one, flickering the lantern flames in its intensity. Alcohol flowed into golden goblets and pewter tankards: Coronian reds and Fallienese whites, Istralothian pales and Salvic darks. Some of the elves would grumble that human wines could never match the purity and palate of the Raiaeran vineyards of old. Many of the men of the south would miss the taste of the breweries of their homelands. But they drank their fill all the same.

The speaker walked amongst them like a veteran campaigner, bantering words and swapping drinks with aplomb. A stray observer would never have guessed that he had not once fired a shot in anger against any of Xem’zund’s minions. He greeted a drunken halberdier like a long-lost friend, though they had never once met before. He entered into discourse with a florid elf on the respective qualities of Radasanthian and Underwood wines, and how the latter held a slight bitterness to its aroma that reminded him of the lost vineyards of Tirinost. He perched on the edge of the counter and regaled a trio of half-elf Bladesingers with the tale of the Dawnbringers and how he had once polished Godhand Stryker’s left boot. Their merriment echoed through from walls of sculpted marble, through draughty windows into the swift-moving night.

Once upon a time, Nenaebreth had grown fat off the silvery birches of the Timbrethinil. Trade had flourished between the new capital of Eluriand to the west and the ancient capital and port of Anebrilith to the east. But the Dread Lich had found the town defenceless and ripe for plunder when marching north towards Trenyce from the Lindequalme. Its location had spared it from utter destruction, but only mercenary riff-raff had sheltered beneath its eaves after its capture. They had cared neither for its culture nor its ascetic qualities. Six months under their rule had left only the barest dregs still standing.

Then in the first days of the Spring of Retribution Dawning, the Legion of Light had defeated Maeril Thyrrian on the plains outside Nenaebreth. A day later, they moved in and liberated the town proper.

Encouraged by the new peace, by their ones and twos old faces had returned and new faces had taken up residence. The Elythian League recognised the strategic value of the town as many had done before, earmarking a small garrison to man the ruins of the central citadel and to patrol the surrounding countryside. Eventually they hoped to divert enough resources to make the land habitable once more. For now, a simple flag-bearing presence would have to suffice.

And thus a single banner, golden starburst on field of white, flew above a town of which much remained in ruin. The elegant wooden townhouses had disappeared in face of the need for fuel or barricade. Ash and rubble strew across the wide paved thoroughfares. Blood splattered the winding alleyways where both citizen and occupier had made desperate last stands.

The building now christened Tallman’s Tavern had begun life as a storehouse, one of the few stone buildings in the township proper. Thus it had survived the occupations in better shape than its wooden neighbours. Lantern light shone from gaps in its boarded windows, beacons of hope amongst the desolate remains of civilisation that had once been. It smelt of warm spice, of alcohol spilt on rich hardwood. It tasted of ambrosia mixed with relief and hope.

And in the midst of that light and merriment strode the speaker, a dwarf of shorn beard and dusky skin. He wore his silk shirt unbuttoned to the chill, such that said stray observer from earlier could pick out every strand of fire-red chest hair burning beneath the braziers. An ugly dwarf, flat of face and square of jaw, none could have guessed that from how his green eyes blazed in merriment and his sagging jowls spread laughter in their wake. Bulbous nose shone bright with one too many drinks, though that stopped him not from downing another ale to the victorious cheers of a pair of Scarabrian huntsmen. His name was Throld Sartet, lately of Gunnbad to the northwest and of Hamdarim far to the south. Those who knew his name decried him as the ne’er-do-well fourth son of the Sartet merchant clan. But all looked awaited in eager anticipation the next wondrous tale he would spin from drink-loosened lips.

His insobriety hampered not his powers of observation. In the corner of the room, isolated from the rest of the crowd by an invisible barrier, a single elf sat over his wine. His robes, gold-trimmed blue, marked him as a scholar of great learning. Throld sidled into the seat next to him without so much as a ‘by your leave’, waved to the bartender for another two of whatever the elf was drinking, and let out a belly-wrenching but polite belch.

“Now you, I reckon, have a story or two to tell.”

The elf, taken aback by this mangy dwarf’s forthrightness, fumbled for a reply.

“I... well...”

“Ah, let me guess.” Throld tapped the edge of his nose to the crowd and gave them a knowing wink. A number leaned close at the gesture, recognising another tale in the making. “You have so many stories that you could not possibly tell them all over the space of a glass of fine wine, or even a thousand glasses of fine wines. A learned scholar such as yourself, from the scribing halls of Anebrilith or of Istien herself no doubt... may the Ancients and the Star Pantheon both bless her memory... well, you must have memorised so many epic tales and legends of old!”

Mollified, the elf even managed a small smile. “A few, master dwarf. I am afraid that none would compare to your masterful tongue.”

“Ah!” Throld beamed from cheek to cheek as the bartender – a stout old man nicknamed Small Bob in contrast to his establishment – arrived with the drinks that Throld had ordered. The dwarf set one next to the elf’s half-full goblet, then downed most of his own in a single swallow. “A modest elf, in addition to an intelligent one. Perhaps, fine sir, perhaps.”

Brilliant green eyes glimmered as he leaned in closer.

“Perhaps if I ask you of the tale of the muse of epics, then, you will be able to oblige?”

The scholar frowned, thin lines creasing his sculpted brow. Flowing brown hair gleamed in the firelight. His blue eyes dallied in thought, completely unaware that a dozen patrons now clung to his every word. Even Throld seemed somewhat taken aback by the seriousness with which the elf considered the request. Something bright – hope, perhaps? – touched the depths of his ale-addled gaze.

“I cannot say I am wholly familiar,” the elf murmured at last, shaking his head as if to clear it of cobwebs. The crowd sighed in unison, tension released as one. Familiar disappointment flickered through the set of Throld’s jaw. “Except... I seem to remember hearing that very phrase in passing not so long ago. One of the battlefield scavengers to the east, who approached me upon seeing my robes in hopes of selling something that he’d found...”

He looked to the dwarf, only to find bright green eyes staring at him intently.

“Now that is a story I would pay to hear,” Throld rumbled in rapt murmur, all traces of insobriety and merriment lost. “Perhaps you would care to recount it for me?”

“An’ fur me?” a second voice, rough and ready, interjected to the sound of the tavern doors slamming open.

[Pinions of Daedalion]

With brawny belligerence she pushed through the crowd to where the elf conversed with the other dwarf, heeding neither muttered curse nor loud protestation. She might have spilt a few ales over undeserving trouser legs along the way, but she didn’t care. Obahyurur would have caused even further chaos if she’d brought him along with her, which was why he currently stood outside the window in the winter chill. And that was thoughtful enough of her, wasn’t it?

“I want to know more, too,” she said to them both, spelling the words out in their faces. In her experience, it tended to work out better for both parties if she pretended she was speaking to the clan idiot. Less puzzled looks, and more results.

It didn’t stop the elf from gaping at her in confusion. But the other dwarf recovered his composure with commendable speed.

“Gamut meliku, tan menu selek lanun naman,” he greeted her in their shared tongue. Good travels, may your forge ever burn bright. He’d pinpointed her as an artisan or a craftsdwarf, which made sense from his point of view. His glance at her mechanical left arm had given him the clue; in any case, he wasn’t far wrong. He switched to Tradespeak, so that the rest of the tavern could understand him as well. “Allow me to buy you...”

“Nai, taleweaver,” she cut him off in curt dismissal. Fixing the elf with her most polite glare, she rummaged through the blood-soaked trophies in the pocket of her smithing apron. Nearby patrons recoiled from the stench, some with enough violence to fall over backwards upon the hardwood floor. Even the other dwarf wrinkled his nose in distaste. The elf paled to the point that she feared he might faint on her, which didn’t bode well for the rest of the conversation. But having journeyed this far into the establishment it was easier to keep trying than to back away and have to find another source of information.

Her fingers grasped what she searched for. She retrieved the goat-skin parchment, smellier and more stained than ever, and shoved it in the elf scholar’s face. His ashen features turned an interesting shade of green.

“From the deepest, darkest depths of the Great Library of Ankhas itself,” she told him proudly, forgetting to enunciate her words in her excitement. “Or transcribed from it, at least. Look! The ashes of a long-dead muse! Did your scavenger say anything about...”

Something between the elf’s eyes rolling back into his head and the other dwarf’s emerald-edged glower warned her to stop speaking any further. She turned to find her compatriot’s bright red nose thrust into her face.

“Now, lassie. Look what you’ve done. After all the trouble I went through to get him to loosen his tongue. And he was just about to tell me something interesting, too.”

Obviously she had angered him, though she had no idea how. And he talked funny for a dwarf, as well. Almost as though he made a conscious effort to ingratiate himself to the skinny tree-huggers or the swarthy island men who shared the tavern with him.

Then it struck her that perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing from his point of view, given that he seemed genuinely irritated by something she’d done. Of a sudden she found herself wishing she’d brought Obahyurur with her after all. The weight of her boomstick slung over her right shoulder felt a lot more reassuring than it had a moment ago.

“Eh,” she shrugged. The tip of her nose wiggled as she took a stab at what had caused the elf to faint. “Not my fault he can’t hold his drink.”

Somebody in the crowd slapped his face with his palm. Another fought to stifle hysterical laughter. The mood swung away from violence, tension seeping away like tendrils of mist into the night. Tavern patrons all around her still kept a wary eye on the dragon-belcher upon her back and the stinking morass of her smithing apron’s pocket. But at least they no longer seemed so willing to beat her up at the drop of a figurative pin.

The other dwarf saw that too, and his heavy eyes sagged in thought. Then he grinned, bearish and wide.

“And the intrepid dwarf switches tactics. My offer of a drink still stands, my dear.” She bristled at that – he looked a lot older, but that didn’t give him any right to patronise her – but he continued in oblivious good nature. “Perhaps you would be willing to explain to me what that piece of parchment’s all about?”

Did he have some semblance of good taste after all? Then again, he did seem to know something about the so-called muse, so... She glanced at the unconscious elf, then eyed the other dwarf for a moment longer.

“Recipe,” she replied at length, unwilling to diverge any further details. For example, there was no need to tell him what the recipe was for. “Apparently I need the ashes of a long-dead... no, long-lost muse to complete it. So. What is a muse?”

The other dwarf frowned, leaning forward upon the stained table between them. It turned his entire forehead into a fascinating mess of folded skin. His breath stank of too much bad ale. She’d never developed any taste for alcohol herself, given that all it did was muddle her thoughts beyond use.

“If I were to, hypothetically of course, say that it was an old artefact of immense value to me...”

“An artefact? Really?” In an instant Sigrun’s mind leapt to the logical conclusion. She fumbled in her pockets for the stick of graphite she always carried with her, overwhelmed by the need to take notes and make calculations. She never noticed the stench that wafted from her lap, or the sudden exodus of other patrons from her immediate vicinity. “In which case if I burn it to cinders in a closed kiln, I should get a lot of ash, shouldn’t I! Affirmative! This is going to go so well, I can almost taste the success. Ooh, this is going to be so good...”

Blithe ignorance allowed the stunned disbelief of her audience to wash over her, a wave of anger over a rock of unawareness. She turned her attention to the elf, grey eyes glittering in eager greed.

“To the east, he said, didn’t he? Or was it west? Ooh, I hope he wakes up quickly so that...”

As if remembering something, she lifted her mechanical hand from the strap that held her boomstick across her back. A delicate flick of her wrist revealed a steel scalpel embedded in her index finger, its honed edge glinting in the dim light of the fires. Her voice echoed over the murmured conversation with cheer, an incongruous grin plastered across her features.

“Maybe if I cut off a nose, even just a little bit of his ear… maybe he’ll wake up and tell me what I want to…”

A moment of utter, total silence.

Something clicked against her temple.

[Diadems of Promethion]

Her sparkling grey eyes widened into the barrel of Throld’s own dragon-belcher. Vera, he called it. An ugly and squat contraption, its shortened stock resembled that of a crossbow rather than a true fire lance. He’d asked the craftsdwarves of his hold to rework the barrel twice so to make it both light enough and strong enough for his needs. Even then he had to heft its bulk in both hands and brace it against his chest. But he had little doubt about what it could do to her pretty face at such close range.

Drawing Vera on one of his own kin offended his sensibilities. Drawing her on another lady repulsed him even more so. But she’d already made it plenty clear that common logic didn’t apply. And he really didn’t like the way she had just threatened the elf with grievous harm.

“Lassie, might I suggest you step away from this table and out of this tavern right now.” He didn’t bother to disguise the gruff contempt in his rumbling baritone. “I don’t particularly mind you asking around for information, but I’m not particularly fond of murder. Or coercion at the edge of a blade. Or at the point of a barrel, for that matter, but we’ll let that slide for now.”

All around him the patrons stirred, some in shock, others in fear. But those closest to him, who’d observed the entire exchange and knew what was going on, fell in line behind him. A couple lay hands on swords at their waist, though they stopped short of drawing steel. The others took their cue and watched on impassively.

Not that his compatriot seemed to notice.

“Oooh, now that’s shiney,” she cooed, as though he held a gold ingot against her head rather than a weapon. She strove for a better look, but no matter how she craned her neck the hollow barrel followed. “How’d you do that? What’s its range? You must have sacrificed heat tolerance to get the metal so thin... but by Freyja’s right pap, that’s so...”

“Enough, says the dwarf with the gun.” Throld’s baritone could have cracked stone. He gestured towards the door with his free hand, somehow imbuing the gesture with courtesy that he no longer felt. “Let it also be known that I’m not particularly fond of people who can speak so callously about burning precious artefacts from a bygone age.”

“Why?” She frowned at him, puzzled. “That’s what the recipe calls for, after all. Hey!”

She directed her last exclamation at a pair of halberdiers liveried in the golden starburst of the Elythian League, just as they grabbed hold of her upper arms. They hoisted her up between them, one to each shoulder, and carried her towards the exit. Her boomstick swung from her shoulders like a poorly weighted pendulum, clattering in unruly aggression against stray chairs and knees. Her protestations fell upon deaf ears, and their grip remained stalwart no matter how she wriggled and fought.

“Hey!” she bellowed again, but neither her stout strength nor her prosthetic arm gave her leverage against her captors. “Wait! Why!?”

“Because to the people of this land, including my humble self, those artefacts represent something a lot more valuable than your recipe,” Throld called after her, holstering his weapon as she disappeared from sight. “And because the only thing we in Raiaera dislike more than a common thief is a desecrator! Am I right, ladies and gentlemen? Did we not all deal with the last one and his undead cronies?”

A genial roar of agreement rose from the low benches and the roaring fireplace, reverberating to the thundering beat of half-full mugs. Shadows scuttled in the hidden depths of the high vaulted ceiling, remnant nightmares of the abominations and atrocities that haunted the town. But for now the living drove back the horror, out from the eaves and into the oppressive night.

They could do little against the sheer emptiness of the corrupted devastation all around them. Yet they could keep on fighting to protect their little corner of the country, whether against the Alerians or the Plague Lords who would destroy it from without, or those insidious agents who would undermine it instead from within.

As for the dwarf-dam with her quirky curiosity, her belligerent ideas of how to ask questions of a stranger, and her sacrilegious proposal for treating a valuable artefact...

A night in the town gaol would do her a world of good.

[Pinions of Daedalion]

She landed hard, her backside grating upon a cell of sooty stone. The hands that had carried her, firm but unyielding, left her there in the night and the cold. Half a town from Tallman’s Tavern, amidst the hasty repairs of a fire-gutted holding house, only the whispers of a forlorn wind kept her company in nocturnal solitude.

Sigrun didn’t mind. Drawing a stick of soft lead from the folds of her apron, she started to scribble.

Her strokes lasted for most of the night. They ran without rhyme or reason across her emergency sheaf of goat-skin parchments. Then, where they ran out of space, they continued in blinkered absorption across the ash-stained stone walls. They’d relieved her of her boomstick, of course, and had chained her prosthetic arm to the wall to stop her from breaking free. But they hadn’t seen fit to take away the recipe clutched in her metal fingers, and from time to time she peered at it to confirm a fact or two.

By the time the dawn’s first light peered in from the barred slit in the grey stone above her head, she had reached her conclusion.

She still had no idea what the ashes of a long-lost muse were. Neither was she any closer to knowing how much artefact she would need to burn to complete her recipe. She now had a good idea of where to look, thanks to that elf. But she had no idea of the exact location, thanks to that dwarf.

Manacles clattered against her cold iron wrist as she slipped pencil and parchment back into her pockets.

Then she turned to the window, squinting in bleary concentration into the early morning sun. At the top of her considerable lungpower she bellowed a single name.

“Obahyurur!”

Silence stirred in the distance, early dawn-song interrupted by the awakening of soulless iron. She inhaled sharply. Damp mildew and ashen cinder suffused her lungs.

Dust billowed towards her on a steady path. Her foot tapped an impatient staccato beat upon the cold floor. Eyes the hue of master-worked mythril reached for the forge fires of dawn.

Thunder reached her ears, steady quakes through her feet that rattled her mind and set her teeth on edge. Almost here now, almost…

Then the wall to her right exploded in a shower of ancient stone and reinforced wood. Obahyurur’s silvery activation rune countered the sunrise in her eyes. Her golem rumbled a low greeting, drowning the raised alarms from the adjoining guardhouse.

With regal grace she stepped into the hole it had made, sniffing once to express disdain at its tardy arrival. Dejected, like a schoolboy told off by his favourite teacher, it followed her out into the streets of Nenaebreth. She led it on a strutting stride through the empty alleyways, winding back and forth beneath fire-gorged eaves and doubling back upon herself time and again. By the time she stood once more in front of Tapman’s Tavern, the sun had just about peeked its face above the hills on the eastern horizon. Shouts in the distance warned her of pursuit, but they had yet to cordon her off. She had perhaps a moment or two to pursue her only lead.

So this time, she didn’t bother with the niceties.

“Knock knock!” she called, as Obahyurur hammered one mighty fist through the oaken doorframe. Solid oak frame gave way like glass beneath a battering ram, sending a lethal shard-storm into the high-roofed den. Only blind luck saved her from racking up a dozen counts of murder there and then, thus turning into a true fugitive from Elythian justice. The tavern lay empty, devoid of souls after a night of hard drinking, and her loud voice had given Small Bob enough warning to duck behind his counter at the first sign of trouble.

“What in… arh!” he screamed, watching his precious liqueurs decapitated one by one beneath a sustained assault of broken wood. “No not the port, not the…”

He winced as the precious pre-War bottle shattered. “Stop it! What do you want!”

“The elf,” Sigrun called out in undiluted cheer, waving Obahyurur further into the premises. The golem stumbled clumsily through a low table, crushing a sitting bench in the process. Wine-stained wood wafted upwards in a cloud of splinters. “And the dwarf. The taleweaver. From yesterday. Now.”

Small Bob worked up enough courage to chance a quick glance around his cover. One look at the black iron golem wreaking havoc in his establishment, silhouetted by the halo of dawn and the ominous rune of bright silver glowing upon its chest, convinced him to duck back in unseemingly urgent haste.

“They’re not here anymore!” he shrieked. Words babbled from his mouth in desperate need to end the nightmare before it ruined his business beyond recovery. “The elf left at dawn for Winyaurient. The dwarf left even earlier, for the battlefield outside town. Said he’d be looking for something… arh! Please! Stop it!”

Broken glass clinked beneath Obahyurur’s iron sole as he stepped through the remains of the table. The floor creaked in ill omen.

From the doorway, Sigrun frowned.

“Oh do as he says, Oby. I won’t be able to pull you out if you fall through. Get back here.”

Her brow furrowed even deeper as she mulled over the barkeep’s words. Why would that taleweaver…

Of course. He wants the muse for himself. That dirty, cheating, whoring, drunken son of a castrated mule!

“Oby, follow me!” she snarled in strident command, spinning on her heel to face again the riotous tumult she’d left in her wake.

[Diadems of Promethion]

Burnt blood. Flesh, charred to cinders. A flood of death and excrement, pooling on his tongue. He fought and failed to control the heaving sobs in his chest.

Here and there rose the blade of a sword, the haft of a broken polearm, planted in defiance of ground defiled by necromantic corruption. Cold ancient iron, straight bladed and nicked where eons of abuse had taken its toll. The occasional glinting shard of dehlar or master-forged steel. But the scavengers had already picked this part of the battlefield clean.

Here and there stood a forlorn banner, tattered and singed in the summer breeze. Some had borne their sigils proudly once: the sunburst of the Legion, the winged sword of the Silverwind, the crossed hammer and axe of Karazund. Others had heralded an altogether more sinister army. Gruesome trophies – strings of hands, ears, and eyes – streamed in the place of tassels. Sundered manacles still drooped where flayed victims had once hung. Together both proud and sinister shared in their ultimate fate: to reach in hopeless futility for the high blue sky, the bodies of the dead heaped in putrid mounds at their feet.

Here and there and everywhere lay the bodies of the fallen, contorted in death spasm, twisted where flame had cleansed the corruption. Little of note remained, for the pyrrhic victors had carted away their fallen comrades and left for the crows the dead who had died again. But still the scavengers gathered, to pick clean what wrath and ruin had left behind.

His myrtle green eyes crawled over the death and the devastation, and he choked on a lump of solid despair. How many had died here? How many had forfeited their chance at life so that others might hope for the same? How few had survived?

His father’s spirit journeyed to the halls of the Ancients, the mortal windows it left behind glassy and opaque beneath the smouldering sky. With his dying breath he bound his sons to their oaths: they would recover the Daughters of Mnemosyne, the nine muses of Eluriand lost to brigands and thieves so long ago, or they would die trying. How many more lives would their quest claim, their patriarch only the latest to fall foul of the curse? How many more would they lose to the darkness of the surface lands, their sister only the latest casualty of the shadow and the flame?

Vision blurring with faith that lay in tattered ashes, he reached down to close the eyes of his sire.

Throld shook his head, clearing it of the conflating nightmares. The reputation of House Sartet had not survived the disgrace of losing the Daughters in the Black Desert during the early stages of the Corpse War. But its patriarch’s death and his sister’s abduction had occurred more than a year later, after the fall of Hamdarim to the south. Only in his hallucinations did they mutate into one. Only in the deepest darkest pits of his despair did he ever admit to feeling guilt and aye, responsibility over them both.

With weary resignation he rose to his feet, thighs cracking and knees popping as they took weight from his heels. His gaze reached out with a world’s weight of sorrow upon the desecrated battleground. Two years ago, the horses of the elnaith had grazed in peace upon these sparsely forested grasslands, while their breeders debated lineage and feed.

Little remained of such tranquillity now. The twin spurs of the Emyn Naug reached out on the horizon with embracing arms to haunt the piles of broken undead with a half-moon penumbra. In those hills his forefathers had established their outpost of Karazund, from which Raiaeran irregulars had launched their counterstrike against the Dread Necromancer. To the north stretched the ruins of Timbrethinil Forest, where the dawning sky wept like a foetid sore beneath cloud set ablaze by the watch-fires of the vigilant. Pools of arcane corruption cast a forbidding veil upon the lifeless arboreal husks, a curtain of miasma into which no sane mind dared to venture.

Doubtless he could weave a tale of it all. Once upon a time, he would begin, in the lands of hallowed Raiaera where the elf-lords dwelled. He would speak of the rise of the Dread Necromancer and the blight inflicted upon the land. He would speak of the heroes who had fallen in its defence, of the ancient swords and tattered banners left buried in the blood-drenched mud. He would speak of the desolation and the despair, the fields of dead beneath the flaming dawn.

Who would be the hero? The farmer’s son, perhaps, listening in attentive rapture to his tale? Or the village drunkard, needing but inspiration to drag him away from the ale? How many would he damn with foolish hopes of victory and glory? For how many more lives would his tales plant the seeds of salvations?

He exhaled again, packing his daemons back into the little box where they belonged. Another day, perhaps, they would re-emerge to haunt him again. Another day, perhaps, he would continue on his self-ordained path of equal parts damnation and redemption.

But for now he had an oath to uphold. A Daughter to seek.

He returned his attention to the filmy miasma upon the deepest reaches of Nenaebreth's battlefield, the dark sanctum dared by only the most foolhardy or the most desperate of scavengers. If he were to find what he sought upon this battlefield, it would be there.

With careful steps through the devastation, he began his search.

[Pinions of Daedalion]

“I’m looking for a dwarf.”

From the vantage of Obahyurur’s shoulder, Sigrun peered across a sea of flame-charred flesh studded with islands of ancient iron. Five tattered figures grovelled in the mud, their skeletal features streaked with grime, their knife ears obscured beneath waves of scraggly unwashed hair. Hardened by years spent scraping out a living from the dregs of death, their instincts screamed for subservience in the face of the imposing black iron automaton. Already, though, her willingness to ask questions gave the leader of the scavenging lowlifes some semblance of hope.

Emboldened, he chanced a rebellious one-eyed glance upwards.

“I’m looking at a dwarf,” he scoffed, legs tensed beneath his body to leap out of the way the instant her reaction showed signs of turning nasty. “A dwarf who seems to be compensating for…”

“I mean another dwarf,” Sigrun interrupted, unperturbed. The barbed vitriol aimed in her direction slipped through her mind without purchase, leaving behind only the irritation that she had to ask the same question twice. “Red hair. Dark skin. Eyes like a suit of armour. Sings stories like a thrush in heat.”

Her allegories made no sense to the elf on the ground. But his mind, honed for opportunity, missed not the fact that she wanted something that he could provide... whatever the lie, whatever the price. Sensing profit on the tip of his tongue, he leaned closer in conspiratorial connivance.

“I might have,” he whispered, eyes sliding shiftily across her face. They did well to hide the distaste. “What’s it worth to you?”

He leapt back just in time. Obahyurur’s silver arm scythed through the air where his head had been, impacting the muddy earth with enough force to send him to one bony elbow. Sigrun smiled her sweetest smile.

“Is your life price enough?”

Obahyurur scattered the grovelling scavengers through the cloudy noon-light with a second thunderous crash. One, too slow to scramble clear, screamed in terror as the automaton grasped her leg and hoisted her high.

“Or will you settle for a leg or two?”

Small and beady from her perch on high, her eyes settled once more upon the elf who had spoken. They missed not the bob of his throat as he swallowed his tension behind a facade of bravado and racial hatred. His face, cold and cruel, stretched taut over razor-edged cheekbones.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, you can’t just...”

Perhaps he meant to say something about carrots and sticks, Sigrun would think to herself later, but she was in no mood for protracted negotiations. Something cracked beneath Obahyurur’s iron grip, a sharp retort followed by agonised screams. Nimbly the golem shifted grip to his captive’s other leg, leaving the broken limb to dangle at an unnatural angle, like some gruesome trophy.

“One.”

Despite the plethora of flame-charred corpses that surrounded him, equally contorted in their death throes, the elf could not shift his gaze from his comrade’s injury. He did recognise that his three other comrades had abandoned him as swiftly as they could scurry from the scene.

“Okay. Okay, okay! Thayne, you’re worse than the elves! We saw a dwarf earlier. Headed south-west towards the desert, hugging the river.”

“The river?” Obahyurur shifted its weight, eliciting another ugly scream from its trophy. The tip of the she-elf’s toes dangled in limp pain, swaying in unseen time to a hypnotist’s pendulum.

“Meets the Red Forest after a day’s walk. No idea why he’d want to go that way, unless...”

“Unless?” The automaton’s activation rune glinted an angry shade of silver, chasing any thought of prevarication from the elf’s mind.

“Unless he was chasing after those black hoods. Didn’t say anything, don’t know where they came from or what they want, only that they arrived and departed within hours. Went to the very depths of this corrupted battlefield, far further than we dare go ourselves. As if they were searching for something, and found it. Then they came back and nicked our stuff as ...”

Crack. Scream.

“What was that for?”

Sigrun shrugged, her brow contorted in thought that far transcended the here and the now. Almost of its own accord her tongue replied to the elf’s furious query. “Dunno, really. Two.”

In emotionless apathy bordering remarkably upon nonchalant disgust, her automaton tossed aside its prey. It hit the ground with an ear-grating shriek that faded immediately into blessed silence.

“Guess you won’t be following me any more, though. ‘Strewth?”

Towards the setting sunset she turned her slave, and on her orders it started to walk once more.

[Diadems of Promethion]

The languid waters of the Elleduin, fed from the Lake of Gold and from its tributaries in the Great Forest and the Dwarf Hills, rustled in tranquil susurration through the tall reeds of early autumn. Where the crimson boughs of the Lindequalme reached towards the black desert sands of Tel Moranfauglir lay the last ford across the river. A grove of silver birches guarded a low island, cocooned by the benign flow of crystalline peace. There in the deep shadow nestled a temple to Aurient the Star Mother, dedicated to keeping the twin corruptions of Pode and Khal’jaren at bay.

In stealthy silence Throld slipped between the fallen pillars. Exposed to the elements and abandoned to the wilds, the spirits of the silent sanctum reacted with hostility to his intrusion, as if rejecting his presence amongst the elder seeing-stones. Even when he built a fire from stray driftwood and a flint from his tinderbox, shades of distant past loomed all around him in angry, but futile, threat.

Before long they spoke, blades of sound slipping in and out of ears long attuned to darkness.

“State your purpose, dwarf. Be quick about it, lest we feel the need to hasten the process by carving your tongue from your mouth.”

Throld grinned broadly into the deepening night. Myriad folds of flabby skin swallowed his eyes, leaving only the ruddy set of his broad nose as reference for his amused expression.

“I seek warmth in the evening chill, and light against the encroaching darkness. What else would I, a simple travelling story-teller, wish from these empty ruins?”

Whispers flittered through the shadows, as if a dozen shapeless forms held conference beyond the realm of what he could ken. He used the time to pull a small tin pot, a block of dried goat-meat, and a pinch of dried mountain herbs from his travelling pack. The sizzling scent of his dinner worked wonders in enticing a reply.

“Do not seek to deceive us, dwen’del. We have observed your clumsy attempts at tracking us since mid-noon.”

Peeled lips exposed a single snaggletooth, mirth exposed in a lone gleaming pearl amidst an ocean of pitted coal. One hand reached up to scratch the back of his head in abashed shame. The other reached once more into his pack. A handful of dusky beans joined the meat in his cooking pot, where they immediately began leaking oily juices that hissed and spat upon the warm metal. Only then did Throld deign to chuckle.

“That must have been quite a feat, master darthirii. The Sage himself would have found it difficult to pick me out from the black sands of his realm.”

For a minute or two only the silence of the abandoned night greeted his words. Then a stray spark of firelight glinted off the soot-dimmed silhouette of a long-barrelled musket, high in the gilded foliage overhead. Satisfaction suffused Throld’s barrel chest, and he allowed himself to bask in its warm embrace. One.

“It is true, I have been following you all day. I believe you have something in your possession that I desire. Armed with the blessing of the Mistress of a Thousand and One Masques, I am willing to negotiate for it.”

Throld felt their eyes narrowing, their brows furrowing. Now that he knew where one of the shades kept watch, he could follow their unspoken whispers to find the rest. The dense river shrubbery opposite, Two. A tangle of vines overrunning a mound of marble rubble, Three. The intersection of two carved pillars downed by the ravages of time, Four. An outcropping of jagged rock around which the current tinkled and swirled, Five. Add to them a pair of sentinels positioned on either bank to guard the approaches to the isle, and he arrived at a standard seven-elf Blackcloak squad.

To his surprise, they responded to his enticement with laughter.

“Not a Kachuck dwarf by your accent,” Four guffawed.

“Must be one of those renegades who sided with the Old Elves,” One replied, the tone of his retort warning the other to stay quiet. “Scout? Spy? Saboteur? Assassin?”

Throld turned away from his dinner, just long enough to incline his head to the unseen speaker.

“Then let us not tell the tale of a squad of Alerian Blackcloaks deep in Raiaeran territory, scrounging for artefacts of power in battlefields where the dead lie unburied. Let us not tell the tale of what a merchant dwarf from Hamdarim might be willing to offer in return for something that was taken from his family by the Necromancer before this war even started.”

A piercing whistle punctured the lulling cadence of his low murmuring: a sentry’s warning, signifying imminent danger.

“Let us instead tell the tale of a maiden with no manners, and her golem of black iron, and the night they decided to attack said merchant with no warning.”

A sudden explosion rent the darkness, and all fell into chaos.

[Pinions of Daedalion]

“Taleweaver! I’m here for you!”

The explosive shot hit the campfire dead centre, and she gave an involuntary whoop of delight. Charred and flaming driftwood arced through the night like miniature meteors, accompanied by a side dish of half-cooked meat and beans.

“Do you have the muse yet? Or are you going to tell me what you know?”

She felt rather than saw the barrel swing in her direction, the gaze of a cheap dark elf knock-off of a musket aligning upon the centre of her brow. Spitting florid curses that they would dare to aim such a shoddy weapon at her, she ducked back behind the meagre cover of her riverside boulder. At the top of her considerable lungs she shrieked,

“Obahyurur!”

The golem bounded from the tree line, dragging behind it the unconscious fool of a Blackcloak sentry who’d given her the opening to sneak up so close to the camp in the first place. True, the taleweaver had been the most engaging of distractions. And the dark elf was young enough to be on his first deployment this deep into enemy territory. And they’d almost outrun the legendary endurance of the dwarves in a forced march through desolate war-scourged lands.

But that didn’t mean she had any sympathy for stupidity. She’d knocked him hard enough on the noggin for him to see stars for a month.

Obahyurur had no such sympathy either. Expressionless, the golem hurled the poor Blackcloak head-first at the pillar behind which her target had sought shelter. Sparks of flame and shards of shrapnel ricocheted from his heavy metal plating as the Alerian muskets retrained on the new threat. They did little to hinder the golem’s advance, and nothing to prevent the unfortunate Blackcloak from impacting with enough force to crack skull and stone. A shapeless form leapt from the pillar as it crumbled, hitting the shadow-strewn ground with drawn steel as its comrade fell limp and lifeless alongside it. A heartbeat later the chiming ring of weapon-play entered her ears, and the taleweaver stumbled backwards parrying in frantic haste.

“Oh for curses’ sake, elf, does it look like I’m in cahoots with that maniac? I was trying to warn you of her approach before…”

Jade-green eyes went wide in face of coal black, warning the Blackcloak that opposed him to react. Obahyurur’s solid metal fist hummed through the air where they had just stood, sundering the earth with enough force to send them both stumbling. The elf regained his feet a heartbeat before the taleweaver did, but hesitation stayed his blade, giving the dwarf the chance to shout,

“My dinner, elf! She ruined it!”

Oh, shal…

Sigrun dove headfirst into the reeds at the riverbank. Just in time, in fact, before a pair of hot lead balls tore past and singed her left pigtail in their passage. She snatched at the trigger in blind response, but the shot went wild and wide into the night. Somewhere in a mile’s radius a starving jackrabbit jumped at a hail of buckshot, but that was none of her concern.

“Get him, Oby!”

The taleweaver didn’t have the muse yet. The dark ones did, the Blackcloaks with their shoddy muskets and their elitist airs. She’d heard little more than rumours about them in the mines of Kir Borim, whispers on the wind that hung like a cloud of doom over their heads. Behave, or the Blackcloaks would get you. Obey, or the overseer will tell the Blackcloaks. As if they would concern themselves with the affairs of one rebellious mining hold in the far north.

Still, she would at least now get to see whether the rumours held true, whether their skill justified the fear.

She inhaled, and her nostrils filled with rank mud and the stench of cordite. Stubby fingers, yellow with engrained sulphur, worked the release mechanism with practiced ease. Snapping springs whisked the empty metal casing past her notched ears, warm steam stinging the scrapes on her wrist. Something burned against her left thigh as she lined up the sighting mechanism. Sigrun ignored it with dispassionate ease, focusing instead on the muzzle flash imprinted in her vision amidst the shadow and the darkness.

She exhaled, blanked away the pandemonium of battle, concentrated. Then pulled the trigger.

A scream of pain rewarded her efforts.

Two down, five to go…

Then she realised she’d run out of cartridges.

Woops.

[Diadems of Promethion]

The golem thrashed about in violent rage, pulverising centuries-old stone with as much effort as it took a booted foot to snap a twig. But for all its intimidating furore it lacked a certain intelligence – or awareness, perhaps – that a lesser foe might have possessed. Engrossed in a deadly dance of steel and iron with Blackcloak bladesmen One and Five, it never noticed Throld sneaking off to the side.

Away from the melee he tried to catch his breath, taming the thunderous beat of blood through his head and acid in his lungs. One’s falchion had notched a deep scar in Vera’s oaken stock. Throld caressed the wound gently, rueing the gold pieces it would take to restore her to her former glory. His other hand reached towards his belt, to reassure himself that he had enough reloads to drive his insane stalker away if necessary. His best chance of negotiating with the Blackcloaks for whatever trophies they may have found upon the battlefield at Nenaebreth lay in ingratiating himself into their good graces. And that meant…

Cold metal pricked his soft fleshy fingers, accompanied by the soft sensation of well cured leather. A satchel, perhaps, the contents of which did not give way when he pressed down upon them. He recognised beneath his digits the solidity of stone, the groan of metal and glass thrown together without regard for safety, the gritty whisper of charred cloth.

My, what blessed luck!

Somehow he’d stumbled upon the very cache of treasure he’d sought to barter access to. Surely it couldn’t hurt if… after all, what they never learned… and it wasn’t as if they didn’t already have enough on their plates…

Muttering thanks to the Trickster he delved into the satchel, heedless of the clouds of chalky dust thrown up in the near distance. The screech of tempered blade on iron hide as Blackcloak battled automaton never even entered his ears. The quaking thunder of the golem’s fists hitting floor mattered not, nor the swirling mantles of conjured shadow as the elves danced out of the automaton’s reach. Only the potential of the prize he’d fought and scraped for mattered, the one he’d even gone to Ettermire and bowed down before an Ancestor-damned wyrm-woman for. Glinting greed gleamed in his eyes, and in the depths of the manufactorum-cured leather his potential treasures gleamed back.

A pair of Bladesinger’s bracers, priceless in the right hands whether Raiaeran or Aleran, jangled to the dusty earth by his knee. Throld gave them not a second glance.

The edge of a short dwarven killing blade, inscribed with foreign runes from neither Hamdarim in the south nor Gunnbad in the north, drew blood from his busy fingers. He tossed it aside with a vicious curse, ignoring the stinging pain.

A piece of tattered cotton cloth crumbled beneath his touch, of a silky weave he had not encountered before. Something tingled like static upon his fingers long after he’d dismissed it as unimportant, the last dregs of focused arcane will long since expunged.

A set of glass vials clinked beneath his grasp, filled with all manner of bloody liquids, soil samples, and particulates of unknown origin. Briefly he brought one up to the light of a burning brand, twirling it to get a better look. Daemonic essence? Lich grindings?

It didn’t matter. He sought something else.

Stone… stone…

His fingers touched upon cool limestone, etched with the weight of a thousand years of history.

And cold steel kissed his neck.

[Pinions of Daedalion]

“Set it down, nice and easy,” the Blackcloak ordered, his sword-hand never wavering. The coal-faced taleweaver complied without question, eyes of deep green wandering across the battlefield he’d elected to ignore. They alighted first upon Obahyurur’s inert form, face down in the river mud, then on Sigrun kneeling at the feet of a primed Alerian musket. She empathised with the look on his face; she recognised it from when she spent an hour or so reading scrolls only to find that somehow the entire day had passed her by.

That didn’t stop her from sniggering in satisfaction when the Blackcloaks dumped the bewildered taleweaver alongside her.

“There’s definitely only the two of them,” the Alerian second-in-command murmured in his youthful commander’s ear. “But Ulfar’s gone, and Zilkas won’t be able to fight with that shoulder wound.”

Perhaps he thought to keep the information private, but his actions only betrayed the typical lack of respect the dark elves held for the dwarves they called their allies. Sigrun had spent all her life in the mines, and though her eyes would never compare to those of that nanun-kulum, she could pick out the squeak of a blind molerat at a thousand paces. Even the taleweaver, a surface dweller if ever she’d seen one, had his ears primed and the line of his jaw set.

“That thing cracked Ulfar's skull open. Of course he's dead. Zilkas will just have to keep up.” The squad commander obscured his face with hood and mask, but still his anger and disgust emanated like the waves of heat from an open furnace. “More importantly…”

Together the Blackcloaks disappeared from her peripheral vision. The primed musket in the small of her back dissuaded her from following them with her head, so instead she closed her eyes and allowed the rolling night to take control.

The River Elleduin lapped upon the reeds and the mud of the ford, a loquacious lullaby lilting and loving.

“Told you that they weren’t… too many young… Greencloaks, not…”

Night insects chirped tentative queries into the aftermath of the violence, wondering what had happened to shatter their serene slumber so.

“Stop… matter now. Ready…”

The remains of the taleweaver’s campfire smouldered in wispy shadows, acrid and angry where the Blackcloaks had hurriedly extinguished them.

“Need to know… why…”

Stone clinked against metal and glass, a cacophony of breakables beneath an uncaring grasp. The strident symphony lasted for a few seconds longer while the Blackcloak commander searched for something within the satchels his men had carried. Then heavy bootsteps in the soft ground brought the shadowy figure back into view.

“So,” the dark elf spat at them both, one eye fixed on his subordinate. “I suppose this is what you hargluk are both after?”

Something landed in the mud before them, splattering their knees with the impact. Sigrun’s eyes leapt to a piece of hard granite, infused with enough runic power to make the hackles on the back of her neck rise in salutation. It took her a couple more moments to recognise what she saw, but she could mistake neither the master-wrought stone nor the sheer power that had shorn it from its mother-rock. She blinked in surprise and leaned close, forgetting that the Blackcloak standing behind her had orders to blow her head off if she so much as twitched.

“That’s a fragment of an Anvil of Power.” Sigrun whistled through her front teeth as her trained gaze picked out the trails of coursing power etched into the worn granite face like veins of electric-blue. “A makeshift one, not one of the ancient True Anvils, but whoever struck those runes upon it was one master runesmith. Don’t know if there’s ten dwarves in all of Kachuck who can wield power like that.”

She looked up, transferring grey-gleaming attention from the artefact to those who surrounded her. The elf’s mask had slipped into something resembling surprise that she would speak so freely of the value of the item. The taleweaver wore something more aghast, stricken that she dared to share precious clan-ken without regard for the consequences.

“But no, that’s not what I or he are after,” she told the Blackcloak before he could recover. “We’re here for something else. A different artefact. Something called a muse. ‘Strewth!”

Her eyes narrowed, and she wriggled free from the grasp of her captor, trying to ignore the muzzle sighted upon the back of her head.

“You wouldn’t know anything about it, would you?”

[Diadems of Promethion]

Throld winced as the butt of the Alerian musket hit the other dwarf squarely at the base of her neck. She went limp and collapsed to the ground, like a sack of tubers tossed into a storage pit. Four’s dusky fingers reached from the side and retrieved the broken artefact as One continued speaking, unperturbed.

“We?”

He knew that he had to come up with exactly the right answer, and that he had to do so fast.

“My. Din. Ner,” he replied, enunciating each syllable with the emphasis of the loss he had suffered. One blinked twice before shaking his head in resignation.

“Ah yes, seared salted meat and mushy beans.”

“High cuisine for a bug-eater,” Throld retorted, warming to the banter.

One cocked an eye. His words spilled with care, thoughtful and measured, even as he waved away the instinctive angry response of his subordinates. Throld could see that he’d touched a nerve, though. The enlisted men didn’t think as highly of their lieutenant as they otherwise might have.

Something to exploit?

“You know that phrase, but you speak it with such disdain. You’ve been to Ettermire, then, but I am correct that you are not from Alerar. Tell me, dwarf, why should I believe that you speak with the authority of the Mistress? What assurance do I have that you do not steal her name?”

“None,” the coal-faced dwarf answered without hesitaiton, having spent enough time in the Alerian capital to know that none who played hwist, the Gentile Game, would give any such assurance. “Jal khaless zhah waela.” All trust is foolish.

“Khaless nau uss mzild taga dosstan,” One laughed as he gave the standard riposte, concealing his amusement at the dwarf’s poor pronunciation. Trust no one more than yourself.

Then his brow furrowed in further thought, and Throld could almost see the possibilities racing through his mind. Was this all part of an elaborate ruse? Were the two dwarves in collaboration, either to rob his troop of their prizes or to pin them here until Raiaeran reinforcements arrived? Did he have anything to gain by participating any further in this charade?

No. The lieutenant glanced once at his serjeant as if for affirmation, then let his glare grew hard.

“Even if you do have her approval, dwarf, she has no sway over the Blackcloaks. Especially this far away from the gutters of the Bottomless Pit where she belongs.” A curt chop of his hand cut off Throld’s protestations with a ruthlessness that indicated he didn’t intend to play games any longer. “Tell her to keep her blunted nose in her own affairs, and that if she wants anything from us she should try official channels. I believe the Undersecretary of Defence is currently the proper point of contact.”

“Except that I would have to get him to acknowledge your activities here in eastern Raiaera. Or the existence of the Blackcloaks in the first place.” Throld knew little of Alerian politics in comparison to One. But even he could tell that such a request would take years, perhaps decades, to pass through Alerian bureaucracy. And that assumed he had the political clout to make the request in the first place and the favours to trade to get word to the right ears. Of those, he had neither.

One grinned in wicked victory, now firmly in his element. Throld missed not the subtle nod he gave Five standing behind him, nor the rustle of crisp night air as the Alerian braced his musket.

“One last thing?” the Blackcloak asked, one gloved hand indicating the tidy pile of three sealed satchels that now lay behind him, ready for transport. “What was it that you both sought? What is this muse that you so fervently seek?”

Throld hesitated for the most ethereal of heartbeats, truth and lie alike dancing on the tip of his tongue. Before the elf behind him could make up his mind to club him regardless, he spoke.

“A stone tablet.” Eyes of polished jade gauged One’s reaction, not once deviating from their scrutiny. But the Blackcloak was far too experienced a political operator to give anything away with an inadvertent flick of his attention. “About the size of your palm, maybe a bit larger, traced with a single...”

This time One did react. But not towards the satchels. Instead, towards the dwarf-dam on the floor alongside him.

His hand went straight to his falchion, as if...

Throld instinctively dropped and rolled through the cold wet mud. Four strident syllables echoed over his head into the night.

“O-BA-HYU-RUR!”

[Pinions of Daedalion]

From the silted flats the golem ascended, like a titan’s cadaver risen from the dead, like an elemental of the earth’s wrath manifest. Rivulets of river water streamed from its body of black iron, waterfalls from on high. The activation rune on its chest glowed in silver glory, drowning the dim starlight dancing upon lilting waters. Mud squelched beneath its heavy tread as it answered her call.

The Blackcloak commander didn’t bother to check what rose up behind him; the stricken look on the face of his serjeant exclaimed the danger louder than a thousand words. In a blinding flash of swirling shadow and river spray he disappeared from the scene, leaving Sigrun with a clear view of Obahyurur’s beady eyes as they focused on the danger.

The Blackcloak guarding Throld, less inured to the unexpected, leapt two steps backwards with the liquid grace of his people. Training took control over frayed nerves, and he began to bring his musket up to his shoulder, bracing it against the automaton’s charge.

Greencloak. ‘Strewth!

But the one standing over her hesitated not. Instead of fleeing the golem, he raised his weapon for a killing blow to the back of her prone neck. No doubt he thought to deal with the mistress rather than the minion, and to save himself a world of trouble.

Sigrun knew better than to give him the chance.

Calloused fingers unstoppered one of the two vials at her waist with a deft snap and twist. Bottled smoke escaped into the night like a plume of volcanic gas, accompanied by a belch of thunder so loud she imagined the Ancestors themselves jolting awake from their stonebound sleep. Even in full knowledge of what would happen upon releasing the cork, she couldn’t prevent herself from flinching as the overwhelming noise turned her mind white.

But she could still react swifter than the deafened, blinded Blackcloak looming over her.

Belatedly the musket-butt fell, the hammer blow upon the anvil of her vulnerable vertebrae. But she met it instead with the augmented strength of her prosthetic left arm, and though it hit with enough force to jar the gears in her ‘elbow’ she felt no pain. Thick smog blinded her opponent as he instinctively backpedalled, abandoning musket for sword. Into that gap roared Obahyurur the mighty, arms like tree-trunks sent scything through the air with almost enough force to tear shreds in the fabric of reality.

Sigrun paid her automaton no heed: the earlier skirmish had assured her that she could trust Oby to handle himself against any one of the Blackcloaks. More importantly...

... the satchels!

They had languished at the Blackcloak commander’s feet just before he’d disappeared. That left his second-in-command and that other dwarf within their reach, both closer to the prize than she. But neither could have expected the thunder and smoke. She had to make that count to her advantage.

With reckless abandon she threw herself forward, groping in blind haste through the diminishing smog. The shrill ringing in her ears soon began to subside. The kaleidoscopic world of bright colour stopped spinning behind her closed eyelids. With every shred of sense returning to her control she grew further aware that nobody other than Oby moved in her immediate vicinity...

... but then she touched the cold, ruined stone at the far end of the muddy clearing.

At length the smoke lifted from Obahyurur’s metal form on the river bank, still swinging in confusion at thin air.

And she stood alone, abandoned on the river isle, with neither elf nor satchel left in sight.

[Diadems of Promethion]

Downstream from the embattled isle, the Elleduin spat forth a mud-drenched dwarf. A handhold at a time Throld dragged his sopping body onto the safety of the gravel bank, coughing and spluttering curses in throaty Khudzul. Distant thunder lingered in his head, a storm of bright light and pain that refused to die away. The fingers of his right hand clutched the side of his grimacing features; the fingers of his left dragged behind him his sodden dragon-belcher. The tails of his auroch-hide longcoat dragged in the riverbank. Spidersilk robes of opulent purple clung to his belly below the translucent red hairs on his chest.

“Ronus sod that lassie. Ronus sod that golem of hers. And Ronus sod myself for falling for such a cheap trick!”

Now she had far more information about the Daughter than he felt comfortable about. And after that last confrontation, he had less chance than an icicle in the underearth to reinstate further negotiations. But the Blackcloak lieutenant One had made it clear that he faced decades, even centuries, pursuing the matter through Alerian bureaucracy. The New Elves would quite see him rotting in his grave before even acknowledging he had a claim upon their prize. And that presumed he could convince the Mistress of a Thousand and One Masques to aid him.

At least the Ancestor-damned golem’s attack had confirmed something. Four, the Blackcloak second-in-command, had failed to resist a knowing smirk upon retrieving the satchels in the wake of Obahyurur’s charge. Even now Throld could picture in vivid detail the gleam of his filed canines through the dissipating smog, the gloating triumph writ upon his fine elfin features. They had what he wanted, and now they knew it.

That left him with but one option. He had to get to the Blackcloaks before they reached the safety of the Alerian frontline. And, whether by force or by wile, he had to retrieve the muse before the dwarf-dam beat him to it.

“Bah,” he snorted to himself beneath his breath. The stubble on his lantern jaw glistened in the midnight starlight. “By Ronus’s beard, I was never much one for this fighting malarkey.”

Still, he had no choice. Even if he himself had no personal attachment to the accursed artefacts, he could not set aside so easily the oath he had sworn in the name of his Ancestors.

And besides, now that he thought of it, what a tale he would have to tell!

Shaking the last of the thunder from his head, he reached down to check on Vera. Aside from the scar upon her polished stock she showed no further injury from the encounter with the Blackcloaks. As he feared, though, the river water had ruined the blackpowder cartridges carried in her belly. He would have to dry them out before he could use them, but he had no time to waste setting up camp if he wanted to overhaul and overcome the Blackcloaks. Not for the first time, he thanked his foresight in water-proofing the pouch in which he carried his spares.

With practiced ease Throld cracked the dragon-belcher open, ejecting the two sodden cartridges one after another. He spent a moment longer ensuring that no grit or weed clogged the delicate spring-loaded mechanisms within. Peering closely at Vera’s master-crafted insides, he felt almost like an apothecary examining a patient.

Satisfied at last, he reached into the oiled sealskin pouch at his hip. He had to think for a further moment before he chose a replacement pair of cartridges from within. In times like these, when he had a choice between solid and scatter shot, the Ancestors truly tested his ability to plan for the battles that lay ahead.

The moon slid in and out of the scuttling clouds overhead while he worked. A brisk autumn breeze bit at the nape of his neck, and the lullaby of the Elleduin whispered over the drumbeat of his heart through his aching mind. By the time he raised his head once more to look at the horizon, all his troubles and fears had slotted into their respective slots. His mind calm, his gaze steady, he turned his thoughts next to how he might track the Blackcloaks down.

Thankfully, though, he didn’t have to think hard.

They wouldn’t head north into the heartlands of Raiaera, for that would bring them too close to the Elythian League forward headquarters at Winyaurient.

They wouldn’t head south into the Lindequalme, for even after the Dread Necromancer’s banishment there lingered horrors and abominations beyond count beneath the eaves of the corrupted blood-oaks.

They wouldn’t head east towards Beinost and the coast, for the Elythian navy still held strong against the Alerians, and they dared not risk such valuable cargo in the turbulent autumn storms.

Which left westwards, in the shortest possible line towards safety, where the plague-lands awaited. But ironically Xem’zund’s legacy posed the least threat to those backed by the full resources of the Alerian military. Throld knew that he had exactly one chance to get in front of them, where he had one last card to play to find them again.

He had better get going, then.

[Pinions of Daedalion]

Dawn broke in the embrace of an ethereal mist, a wispy blanket of low-lying cloud protecting the grasslands from the first of the season’s hoar frosts. She had made good progress under clear moonlit skies for much of the night, but now at long last found herself forced to stop to check her bearings.

“Follow them,” she’d told Obahyurur so many hours ago, and after a moment of consideration it’d set off to the west in its typical loping stride. Perched on its shoulder, at first she’d had no clue how it knew in which direction to head. The question had piqued her interest, forcing her to divert much of her attention to solving the problem. At length she’d began to notice tiny signs - a broken branch here, a patch of flattened grass there - that not even the most patient of pathfinders could erase. A body of five or six elves, moving at haste but burdened by their heavy pickings, making towards the setting moon.

The monotony of the chase had taken its toll on her bone-tired backside, but still she’d pressed on. The Blackcloaks stood not a canary’s chance in the mines of Kachuck of outrunning her tireless golem, or so she’d thought. Until the mists had risen, and she’d lost sight of the tell-tale signs of their passage, and even Oby had slowed to a crawl to check its bearings.

“Well?” she demanded of it crossly, jumping down from its shoulder to stretch her weary aching muscles. The golem returned her mythril glare with its best plaintive expression, wispy tendrils curling from its reinforced shoulders. She tutted, scalding her creation with her ire, before venturing a couple of paces away to find a place to relieve herself.

Crisp morning tranquillity jogged her thoughts as she squatted, turning them back to her need for the ashes of a long-dead... no, long-lost muse. Without it her research would not proceed. That in turn would render moot the painstaking efforts spent filling her grubby apron pocket with grisly trophies. She considered the recipe upon which she relied, transcribed from the deepest darkest depths of Ankhas, a long shot anyways. But failure would irk her far less than to abandon the attempt without trying.

Even if it means destroying a priceless part of our heritage?

Unbidden, the taleweaver’s voice resounded through her mind. She pictured him as she’d last seen him, face down in the mud as he rolled away from her powerful bellow. Then she swiftly tossed him from her thoughts.

What heritage? she called after his retreating back, full of scorn and disdain. The heritage of a failing kin, forced to ally with the deluded rebellious elements of a race of supremacist singing mystics to survive? The heritage of ten thousand years of defeat and failure, of a thousand years of hiding away in the mountains and hoping that the terrors of the deep dark don’t notice?

A proud heritage! he tried to reach out to her. Fading into the void from whence it had come, his voice somehow took on shades of her tutors of old, the longbeards and naans of the scholarium in Kir Borim. One we should honour, not reject. One we should venerate, not desecrate.

Piss off, she laughed at them. If your heritage is really that important, then perhaps I can put it to use by learning from it rather than placing it on a pedestal in some temple somewhere. Until then, you aren’t going to stop me from doing what I think is right with pretty words alone. Put your lazy arses on the line, or get out of my way.

She banished the noisy ghosts with a wave of an imaginary hand. They disappeared as though she’d slammed a door shut in their faces, leaving behind only an accusatory silence.

Satisfied, she rose from her crouch.

“Obahyurur, you’d better have worked out which way to go, or so help me Freyja I’m going to remake you from scrap!”

Nobody would get in her way, not a hidebound taleweaver, not a squad of wimpy Blackcloaks, not even her own golem’s stupidity.

She had a recipe to complete, a potion to make, and immortality to attain.

[Diadems of Promethion]

Midmorning brought a miserable north wind, and a cold constant drizzle that somehow found a way to soak through two layers of thick leather. Icy needles lashed at his face and tore at the spidersilk string holding back his hair. But he came from a line of a doughty and hardy folk, and even lecherous ne’er-do-well Throld had the relentless endurance of his people. He would not allow a ragtag bunch of elves to outpace him on a forced march across open ground.

The grasslands sickened around him, their condition worsening the further west he travelled from the Elleduin. Blankets of rotten ash blanketed farm and forest alike, a patchwork of fungal spores colonising Raiaera one acre at a time. Putrid soil gave way beneath his every step, the first sign of the contagion that would eventually consume it whole. The malice of the Dread Necromancer lingered long beyond his demise. But for now the rain dampened the worst of the blight, allowing Throld to navigate the rolling plains with little more than a light handkerchief pressed against his face.

Looks like the rumours were true, he grimaced to himself. If anything, they’ve understated how serious this is.

The villagers at Nenaebreth had spoken of necromantic residue preying on the fabric of reality as far as the eye could see. They had whispered in fear of heavy clouds of black ash that could zombify a man in the space of a single breath. Elythian Skyknights made regular sweeps of the boundaries of the plague-lands: hunting down Alerian infiltrators, turning away intrepid or overzealous adventurers, and burning away the worst of the spore infestations. But they had neither the capability to prevent the blight from spreading nor the numbers to close the border in its entirety. Could they do anything more than watch as their lands withered and waned?

The sun rose to its zenith in the southern skies as he pondered. As it began its downward journey, Throld sought shelter in one of the few farmhouses not yet smothered by the blight. A sweeping white-stone structure of curved lines and airy windows, it perched on the brow of a low rise and boasted a magnificent view of hillside orchard and sprawling grain-fields alike. But the will of the untamed wild had long since claimed the vista. Long had the manse lain unoccupied, its original owners dead or fled, any later occupants driven out by successive waves of undead abomination and necromantic plague. Not a scrap of edible food or drinkable water remained beneath the low-hanging oaken eaves. Jagged cracks in the walls and rotten timbers in the rafters attested to the building’s state of disrepair. A faint stench of wet mould hinted that it didn’t have much longer before the blight claimed it too.

Still, it would provide him with shelter against the rain while he played his last card. Suppressing his distaste at having to resort to it, he set about with a will.

He began by gathering what he needed from the dilapidation. A shattered piece of crockery, once a serving bowl for ten, now a jagged porcelain shard that would hold just enough water to reflect his face in. The stub of a honey-wax candle, both to disguise the stench of decay and to provide light to see by in the gloom of a disused antechamber. A pinch of priceless speckled glass-ash from his inner pocket, wrapped with care in his best handkerchief. And a flask of his favourite Isralothian red, smuggled in the inside pocket of his overcoat all the way from Gunnbad.

Pouring just enough wine into the porcelain shard, he placed the flickering candle flame to illuminate his unkempt reflection. He then sprinkled the glass-ash into the liquid and took a deep breath. In his mind he pictured the incantation he had learnt from the Mistress of a Thousand and One Masques. He had to get the words just right, just so, or else she’d warned him that the ritual would fail. And with only a pinch of the speckled glass-ash in his possession, he had no second chance.

“Itten mo kumori no naki kagami no moto, mizu wa tomari shizuka ni tataeru,” he recited from rote. His mellow baritone enunciated each syllable with the necessary care, infusing them with their innate meaning. In a mirror as clear as a cloudless sky, water stands as still as the silence.

Arcane power breathed across the wine, the only movement in the motionless world around it. Ripples of the darkest burgundy drew his mind into their fathomless depths. Raw undiluted magic swirled about his person like a cloak of mist, setting every hair on his body on edge. He had to fight not to recoil against the unpleasant sensation.

But almost before he realised it he balanced in precarious poise over the liquid mirror, as though trying to see what lay beyond its shimmering surface veil. Just in time he caught himself from overbalancing any further and disrupting the ritual entirely.

This is why we do not play with the raw force of the void.

But he had no other choice. His oath bound him to do everything in his power to recover the Daughter. And that meant resorting to blasphemy if need be.

A minute passed without further change, then another minute that soon stretched into five. For long breathless eternities he feared that he had failed.

Then, in abrupt realisation, he found himself face to face with a living something. Human features, handsome and serpentine, melded into the flowing wine as though forcing it to their will.

“Gallievo’s dwarf,” they greeted with a brusque lack of ceremony, muffled and obfuscated as though fighting hard just to speak. “I had warned her not to be so profligate with the obsidian tears, so I hope this is of some importance. Very well. Ask me a question, dwarf, and if it is within my ability to answer it I shall do so.”

Throld swallowed in nervous trepidation. He understood the rigid rune-lore of his people. But wild magic, tethered to nought but the caster’s whim... never could he trust it. And yet, here he knelt, with only the Mistress’s word protecting him from this unseen mage.

For the Daughter, he reminded himself, girding his loins.

“I wish to know the location of the Calliopean Tablets.”

The face in the wine blinked once. Then it nodded in concentration. Within minutes, Throld had his answer.

[Pinions of Daedalion]

“Answer me this, Obahyurur.”

Her husky words broke the hushed tedium, strangely muffled from beneath the grimacing face shield given to all dwarven smith apprentices. The drizzle of earlier had progressed into a full-fledged downpour, complete with occasional iridescent streaks of electrostatic discharge racing through the dying twilight. Corruption poured from the skies in greasy sheets, burning like acid against what bare skin she left exposed beneath all the leather she wore. The sun had long since fled, leaving behind only the cold and the dark. Even Sigrun, at home in the dark and the damp, felt some semblance of discomfort beneath the relentless assault.

“They could have killed us last night, no trouble.”

Yet had they elected to fade away at the river isle instead of forcing the confrontation. She could not have hoped to better a Blackcloak in a sprint, any more than the pigeon could outrun the peregrine. Even over longer distances, elven fieldcraft usually outfoxed dwarven endurance. But encumbered by their pillaged burdens and sheltering an injured comrade, they might have feared that she would keep pace with them. Surely it made more sense for them to cripple her there, even at the cost of one or two of their number, before retreating?

“So why did they run?”

The golem neither answered her nor relented in his loping stride through ankle-deep muck. Viscous rivulets of black filth streamed about his feet, eating away at the master-forged black iron like scavengers nibbling away at an inert corpse. She would have to replace the iron when she returned to proper civilisation. It wouldn’t do to let her most valuable tool to fall victim to necromantic corrosion. Even if it did have an annoying tendency to ignore her rhetorical questions.

So she answered herself instead.

“Because they have a plan.”

Precariously perched upon Obahyurur’s shoulder, she peered out into the cloying gloom. Her fingers, dusky with freshly engrained blackpowder, left sooty streaks on the cold metal. The driving rain dampened all sense of sound and smell, forcing her to rely on her weak eyesight for any information about her surroundings. She envied Oby, who seemed quite content to continue on whatever course he’d found.

Ground unfolded before them, its ascension into the shadows culminating in a ridge line perhaps an hour distant. Beyond that ridge, her mental maps told her, stretched the abandoned highway from Eluriand to Anebrilith.

“Which means, Oby, that we have to act before they can.”

Sheet lightning rippled across the crimson underbelly of the heavens above. For its brief existence it illuminated a structure on the heights ahead. Three slender spires of glass and marble reached in broken grasp for the starless heavens, protecting the travellers as they journeyed the High Path. A wayside temple to Aurient the Star Mother, to Galatirion the Sky Father, to Selana the Young-Star.

They’re there, she realised with a start.

Like all the buildings in this part of Raiaera it lay abandoned, devastated by tides of war and necromantic horde. The slenderest of the towers had toppled in its entirety. Shards of stained glass had scattered across the slope, reflecting every anvil crawler like an ethereal carpet of stars rippling through the night. The remaining two towers still stood against the darkness, their spires crowned with lapis lazuli domes glistening in the wet. A narrow skywalk connected them far above the ground, parting the low-running clouds like a keen-edged blade.

A stray thought struck her, as random as the thunderbolts from the storm overhead.

“Wonder if that taleweaver’s already caught up with them?”

Then she chuckled to herself, laughing away the ghosts in a cloud of pungent ozone and necrotic toxins.

“Not that it matters!”

Find the Blackcloaks, take the tablets, leave them in the dust. Preferably in that precise order.

Nothing too much to ask of Sigrun Kondrat, artificer extraordinaire.

“’Strewth!”

[Diadems of Promethion]

Lashing raindrops drove into empty gaps in the wall, once occupied by stained windows etched with scenes from Raiaeran mythology. The voyage from the west. The Durklan wars and the blighting of the Black Desert. The curse of the Red Forest and the Leaguer of Caradin.

Now priceless history lay scattered in myriad shards across the marble mosaics and the muddy hills beyond, soon to fade from the reach of all who might seek it. But the Blackcloak lieutenant cared little for any such melancholy, nestled in the corner of the largest tower in full slumber. Two of his men curled in fitful slumber a short distance away, among them the wounded Zilkas. The remaining three kept watch from the top of the spires and the skywalk overhead.

Throld almost felt bad for disturbing them.

He scraped the heels of his boots on a patch of muddy gravel, loud enough for only One to hear. The Blackcloak jerked awake at the sudden sound, only to find Vera’s muzzle staring him in the face. Shock flitted across his cruel-wrought features, reminding Throld of a young lad caught in a compromising situation. Priceless. To his credit he reined in the reaction with all the reflexes of his kind, narrowing his golden irises into an inscrutable, suspicious mask.

“How did you...” the dark elf snarled beneath his breath, though he dared not make any overt move beneath the custom dragon-belcher’s unflinching glare. Throld simply shrugged.

“Never keep a dwarf from his prize,” he grinned, exposing a single gnarled tooth. Like his prey he spoke in lulling quiet, his baritone rolling like gentle thunder beneath the relentless rain. “Truth is, Blackcloak, you had me worried for a while. Nearly slipped me, you did.”

“But you found us all the same.”

“Never underestimate a dwarf kept from his prize,” Throld nodded in genial agreement. “Now, while I have your attention, shall we talk this out like gentlemen? Or would you rather cause a ruckus, call for help, and end up with a fist-sized hole through your head for merry measure?”

He took the Blackcloak’s silence to indicate a willingness to listen, at least for now. Bracing Vera with one meaty hand, he reached into his coat and drew out a leather-drawn purse jingling with gold coin. Luminous Alerian eyes followed his every move through the wafting murk, but he could tell that he’d piqued the elf’s interest.

“Two hundred golden coins. The finest thrones from Gunnbad. More than worth their weight.”

“For?” The youthful lieutenant licked his lips without realising it. Two hundred Gunnbad thrones was not an inconsiderable sum, depending on what the stunted one wanted. His superiors needn’t know, after all. That said...

“I know you’ve got what I want. Let me look through your pickings... if I find what I want, I exchange it for the gold. If I don’t find it, you keep the gold anyways. You don’t lose anything that’s important to you, one minor artefact amongst that haul. I get what I want, you get the gold, we both win.” Eyes of glittering jade studied his adversary with care. “What do you say...”

“No,” came the instant response, clear and cutting through the downpour. Throld’s bushy red eyebrows rose, taken aback. Vera wavered from her target before settling again.

“... I see,” he muttered, quashing with ruthless abandon his own warring instincts. He had promised to talk like a gentleman. He would not break his word now. “Perhaps then, you would be kind enough to explain why?”

Gleaming gold irises bore into his own, and not for the first time Throld marvelled at the Alerian’s sheer youth. But when the elf’s melodious tones gave voice once more, the dwarf shuddered inside at how weary they echoed beneath the oppressive thunder.

“Know you not then, dwarf, of the monstrosity that stalks us in this Silent War?”

“Plague?” Throld guessed. “Some present of the Necromancer that hinders your advance into the Eluriand heartlands?”

The Blackcloak shook his head, the words he spoke burdening his shoulders with the weight of the world.

“If only it were so simple.” Dark lines traced his cheeks as he grimaced. “Perhaps it is right that you should learn of this from me. A Disciple of the Dark God has risen, an eldritch abomination from the legends of eons long past. It stalks the western reaches of the Lindequalme, stymieing our every attempt to break out in force from the Niadeth Pass.”

“A whattie of a who-what?”

Furrows of deep black creased the dwarf’s forehead. Never in his many years of spinning tales had he ever come across the title. Oh for sure, he would weave myths of monstrosities capable of decimating entire armies before the chosen hero defeated them. But they were just that... myths, stories, caricatures against which to paint the virtues of determination, courage, and honour. Never in a thousand years had he...

No, he corrected himself, sick to his stomach. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe. It was that I didn’t want to. What storyteller wants his worst nightmares to come to life?

“That bad, eh? That you would grasp at any straw, even the abandoned relics of an arcane battlefield, on the chance that they might give you an advantage?”

Etched horror rose to the surface of the Blackcloak lieutenant’s features. Throld met it with sympathy, and care, and a sudden overwhelming desire to work out a deal with the Alerian. Perhaps if he accompanied the Blackcloaks back to Ettermire, he could talk directly with the elf’s military superiors. There, the influence of the Mistress of a Thousand and One Masques might count for more.

He’d just opened his mouth to make the suggestion, when two things happened at once.

First came the whistle from above, piercing and strident and urgent.

Then came the voice from the darkness.

Throld groaned in despair.

[Pinions of Daedalion]

“Now that’s interesting! Tell me more!”

Obahyurur powered through the base of the tower, shedding raindrop and marble fragments alike from its black iron shoulders. The earth shuddered in time to its advance. Towards the sheltering soldiers it marched, towards their stunted guest and the untidy pile of satchels that it sought. Sigrun followed her automaton through the gap, heedless of the ominous creaking from above. Spitting ashen dust and the taste of greasy corruption from her mouth, she greeted them all with a cheery smile and the barrel of her dragon-belcher.

“See, I don’t think it’s a very nice thing to do,” she continued without missing a beat. “Keeping secrets from people. Withholding knowledge from those who would benefit from it. It’s heavy-handed. Mean-spirited. Short-sighted. Narrow-minded.”

Her smile turned to a growl. Her eyes narrowed to slits of fury. Her boomstick never wavered from the pair of targets beneath its muzzle.

She paused to give their slow minds a moment to comprehend, and as she did so the tower behind her crumbled into the night. A piercing Alerian scream echoed into the drenched darkness, meeting a premature end in solid mud and rock. A shower of debris accompanied the groan of falling stone, crescendoing to the thunderous cacophony of impact and a wave of billowing mist.

The dwarf and her golem never once halted in their stride.

“So. Stay where you are, hand over those satchels, and tell me everything you know.” She thought for a moment, then nodded. “In that order. ‘Strewth.”

Urgent cries from overhead heralded the collapse of the remaining skywalk. Handcrafted fragments of marble crashed into the mud behind her, splattering the back of her legs and raising clouds of corruption in her wake. She stopped walking when just out of their reach, her dragon-belcher watching them carefully all the while. Grimy rain sizzled and steamed as it traced coursing paths down her pinched cheekbones.

The Blackcloak and the taleweaver exchanged glances. Between them passed a veritable cavalcade of emotions: anger, distrust, remorse, acceptance. The former hardened his glare. The latter winced.

Then the Blackcloak uttered a sharp command.

“Elgg tu’harglukkin.”

Kill both dwarves.

[Diadems of Promethion]

She must be out of shot. If not, she wouldn’t have walked into the open like an idiot to let her fuse get soaked.

“No shit, there I was...” Throld muttered to himself beneath his breath, blinking the rain-spray from his eyes and throwing himself into action.

By his count five elves remained, arrayed in disorder against a batshit-crazy dwarf-dam and her mindless automaton. His poor lonely self formed the unwilling third party to this impromptu melee a trois. A generous storyteller would remark upon how high the odds stacked against him, as if the fates themselves delighted in his misfortune. A more pragmatic one would allow a moment of silence to linger, to let the facts sink home. But when he put it all together, it meant that he only had one realistic chance at getting away alive.

Grab and run!

Throld's shoulder struck the Blackcloak One behind the knee, buckling the young dark elf to the ground just as his falchion cleared its scabbard. Momentum carried the dwarf into the pile of satchels beyond, head slamming into the crumbling wall behind them with the force of hammer on anvil. Stars and white flashing lights hampered his recovery, but he knew that he’d gambled correctly. The lassie had not shot him.

Instead she screamed like a wildcat, tussling with the poor Blackcloak commander who found himself with the hard luck to stand between her and her prize. Even on one knee the Alerian had the advantage of training and skill, but the dwarf-dam more than made up for it with sheer ferocity and a dirty trick or two. Pouring rain blinded his keen golden eyes. Slippery mud took his remaining foot from beneath him and sent his blade skittering away upon the flagstones. A well-timed boot caught him flush in the groin before he had time to brace.

Hurry, hurry, hurry... Throld urged his trembling fingers.

The two other Blackcloaks on the ground fared little better than their commander. The injured elf had just enough time to rub groggy drug-induced slumber from his eyes. Then the golem picked him up with impossible ease and tossed him wailing over the low compound wall between the two rubbled towers. His comrade, Two, recovered from shock just a moment too late. For the first time that evening the roar of Alerian musketfire rent the torrential downpour. But the bullet ricocheted from the automaton’s armoured form, kicking up sludge where it tore into the pustulent earth.

Two screamed as the metal monstrosity came for him. His terror did not last long.

Found...

Throld’s ears pricked, and he looked up from his hasty search of the satchels to find the dwarf-dam headed his way, murder burning in her mythril glare. Hastily he primed Vera in her direction, hoping against hope that the damp had not got to his powder too.

“Now, now, lassie. You win, I lose. If you don’t mind, I’d just like to skedaddle...”

Another shot rang out, and only the mists cast by the golem’s wanton destruction of its surroundings saved its mistress’s life. Red-hot lead grazed from leather-clad shoulder to forearm. Screeching in pain and rage she threw herself out of the firing line... and towards Throld.

Hastily he backpedalled through the treacherous mud, evading her first desperate lunge by throwing the remaining artefacts in her face. She reeled, surprised, and he took the opportunity to turn for freedom.

A black-clad shadow landed alongside him with a soft plop, falchion bared and glistening in the rain. Five had eyes only for the golem as it rushed to its mistress’s aid. It lashed out in pure instinct, but the Blackcloak parried with such skill it sent the ironclad stumbling to the ground beneath its own momentum. As the elf turned to face again, all swirling black cloak and elegant footwork, Throld scrabbled past on all fours and ducked behind a piece of fallen marble.

There, making himself small against the clamour of battle, he allowed himself to breathe again.

And let his fingers caress the Daughter held against his chest, savouring the thrumming sensation of dormant runic power.

The Calliopean Tablet, he marvelled. A little voice reminded him of the Alerian sharpshooter still perched in the remaining tower, of the Blackcloak bladesman duelling the golem not five paces to his left, of the insane dwarf-dam who would soon finish searching through the satchels and possibly realise he’d robbed her. He wasn’t safe yet. Not by a large margin.

But neither could he wrench his eyes from his prize.

And then things got worse.

A whole lot worse.

“No shit.”

[Pinions of Daedalion]

Sigrun looked up from the last of the satchels, brow fraught and lips worried. The bullet had torn through the delicate gears of her prosthetic limb like a fencing blade through parchment. Her entire left arm had little use beyond deadweight. But neither the pain of her wrenched shoulder nor the frustration of her unfruitful search could compare to the urgency of the warning her sixth sense screamed at her.

Her eyes travelled not to the pile of tablet-like stones she had pulled from the Alerian hoard. Her nose reached beyond the acrid stench of gunpowder, nearly drowned beneath the heady petrichor and wafting corruption. Her ears skipped past Obahyurur’s metallic groans as sharpshooter and bladedancer fought it to a standstill. She concentrated on the roiling clouds above, heedless of the slick rain leaving oily streaks upon her face. Something approached through the mirky skies, something neither beast nor monster... something...

Only she caught the faint flash of fire in the dark, far over the sharpshooter’s head. Only she picked out the thundercrack of the report, louder than any chime of falchion upon iron hide. Only she had the sense to throw herself into cover, leaving the last of the precious artefacts exposed to the wind and the rain and the wrath of what had just come.

By Freyja’s right pap, she swore to herself as the world erupted in bright lights and flying shrapnel. No wonder they camped here long enough for us to catch up!

The skyship parted the clouds like a valkyrie calling the dawn, two hundred feet of sleek oak hull suspended from spidersilk sacs inflated with buoyant deadgas. An Alerian frigate, swift as the west wind and as powerful as any behemoth to fly the skies of the Dagger Peaks. Fifty trained elves manned their battle stations: boarding marines, bombardier gunners, and arcanotech engineers. No doubt, like all frigate crews, they shared a hunger to make a name for themselves and secure promotion to a ship-of-the-line or even a dreadnought. It was a sign of dark elven military superiority that they would risk it, unescorted, deep in enemy territory to retrieve a stranded team of specialists.

Port and starboard swivel guns, mounted in the keel of the vessel with unrestricted fields of fire upon ground targets, opened up anew with lances of flame. Curtains of steam rose where they gouged great craters in the sodden earth. The Blackcloaks retreated behind the veil as rappel lines let loose from the frigate’s under-hatches.

“Oby! Sham Abram!” she bellowed at the top of her lungs. She had to hope that her voice would reach the golem over the deafening thrum of the skyship’s engines and the unrelenting hammering of heavy rain upon earth.

She had lost. There was not a chance in the underearth that she could go up against even the least of Alerian war-machines and hope to survive.

The Blackcloaks would retrieve their artefacts and disappear. She would remain behind with a broken arm, a half-destroyed golem, and the unimportant ingredients of a useless recipe.

The elves and that accursed taleweaver had outwitted her completely, unless...

Unless...

Shards of splintered stone skimmed her metal limbs as the bombardiers on board the Alerian vessel methodically reduced the Raiaeran temple to rubble. Light leather footfalls in churned mud heralded the arrival of the frigate’s complement of marines to bolster the Blackcloaks.

But Sigrun’s eyes narrowed in dawning realisation and, following a moment’s reflection, deathly malice.

[Diadems of Promethion]

It didn’t take him long to realise that the frigate’s gunners intended to destroy the entire temple, just on the off-chance that further threats lurked in the shadows. Throld deemed it prudent to emerge from his cover with Vera holstered on his back and both hands raised in appeasement. It didn’t save him from being thrust to the ground in front of the Blackcloak lieutenant for the second time in two days.

Thankfully, though, One had more important matters on his mind.

“The golem?” he asked Four, gritting his teeth against the pain as a marine medic saw to the gash in his features the dwarf-dam had inflicted. At the least it would leave a distinguished scar across the bridge of his nose, and that was if none of the Necromancer’s corruption had entered his body through the wound. Throld wondered if it would give him more authority with his troops the next time he led an expedition into Raiaera. If he ever got the chance to, of course.

“Down. For now. Doesn’t look like it’s going to move.” Four spoke through clenched jaw, biting down on everything he left unsaid. Still he managed to make himself heard over the report of the light cannons and the loud hum of the mana engines. “Would you like us to take it aboard the Predator?”

“No,” One replied, without sparing any effort in deliberation. “We cannot afford to tarry. Get the wounded and the artefacts aboard. We leave before our pathetic elder kin know we’re here.”

“Mirhgar and Allevial have both passed into shadow,” Five interrupted, sheathing his bloody blade with a flourish usually reserved for Raiaeran Bladesingers. His eyes, of a lighter shade than his comrades, gleamed in sorrow from beneath his full face mask. “But Zilkas still clings to the light.”

“Poor tough fool,” One remarked, wincing as the medic tied the last stitch of a crude battlefield dressing.

Four visibly had to restrain himself from flying at his superior. “And the only one of our Greencloaks to make it back, sir. A fact you might bear in mind when you explain to him why none of his friends are alive any more, sir.”

In the face of his serjeant’s anger, One barely batted an eyebrow.

“We must expect casualties in war. Especially when high command, as you so recently pointed out, insists on bolstering our numbers with so many inexperienced raw recruits.” Overriding his subordinate’s instinctive protest, he continued. “Not to mention there’s the small matter of your delay in coming to my aid earlier. I did say kill both the dwarves. I didn’t expect you to hesitate until together they’d put me out on the floor. Even if you were trying to save Kilcham from falling to death.”

A last hard glare kept Four in his place and Five silent.

“Which in turn brings me to...”

Dabbing the worst of the dribbling blood and rain with a linen cloth, the Blackcloak commander turned to his captive. Throld looked up from the muddy ground in something approximating both grudging admiration and utter disgust. He had to blink away the worst of the wetness from his eyes.

“Wasn’t sure you had it in you, laddie. Guess I shouldn’t underestimate the Blackcloak officer cadre.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” One responded in a voice that turned rain to icicle. “I should take off your head, right now, as a traitor to Alerar.”

“Hey, I had no idea that demented maniac no-kin-of-mine would intrude upon us at such a delicate moment! If you recall correctly, sir, you might remember that I was trying to negotiate with you. Lost a good pile of gold in that mess too... oh.” He directed the last comment at the marines tasked with retrieving the artefacts, who had scooped up the leather-drawn purse and tossed it into the satchel along with everything else the dwarf-dam had left lying about. “But that’s not the point. The point I’m trying to make is that you gain nothing by killing me here, not with that mighty machine of yours looming overhead.”

“And I stand to lose everything by making the Mistress of a Thousand and One Masques my enemy?”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but...” Throld’s deep baritone grew sombre and respectful, “haven’t we spilled enough blood on these lands for the day?”

Four scoffed. Five’s expression might have even showed a modicum of respect. One just grunted, his mind already made up.

The klaxons began to whoop, strident warnings piercing the oppressive night.

[Pinions of Daedalion]

Mana engines whined as they cycled to full power. The frigate lurched beneath the weight of its broadside as it opened up into the banks of heavy cloud. Alerian marine and Blackcloak alike ran helter-skelter for the dangling ropes, abandoning in their haste many of the artefacts she had littered in the mud. Sigrun watched them leave with no little relief, even finding the time to appreciate how they responded to the warning like cogs in a well-oiled machine.

Then a bolt of white lightning tore the heavens asunder. It coruscated for a heartbeat upon the wards woven into the skyship’s envelope, before grounding itself upon the oaken hull and coaxing a dozen small fires into life. Into the breach in the skies swarmed a dozen mail-clad figures and their steeds. Skyknights of Tor Elythis.

A lone bugle sounded their charge in clarion cry, swamping the warning klaxon in a single note of sustained purity. Their passage cast a pillar of bright starlight into which even the Necromancer’s blighted rain dared not enter. For the briefest of eternities the sweet forgotten scents of green grass and fresh air suffused the temple grounds.

The wing leader, a tall elf mounted on a gryphon of brilliant white, screamed a battlecry. His lance pierced the defensive magic woven into the frigate’s construction, tearing a great gash in the gas sacs. Four pegasus riders followed in his wake, peppering the skyship with throwing darts the size of harpoons. Splitting into paired elements after their first pass, they continued to dance an intricate dance around their ponderous prey. Stationary and vulnerable, the frigate could only belch ineffective cannonades at the nimble Skyknights.

Taking advantage of the confusion, as well as the preoccupation of the Alerian bombardiers with more immediate priorities, Sigrun edged out into the open. Fresh-churned sludge suppurated at the soles of her feet. But the cacophony of battle overhead drowned out the tip-toe of the dormouse on the ground.

“Oby?”

Her golem lay in an unresponsive heap, scarred with fresh wounds where the Blackcloaks had disabled it limb by pinion-powered limb. Its right arm stood upright amongst the rubble of the collapsed tower, planted in defiance of the blade that had severed it from its body. Musket-shot peppered the joint at its neck where the Alerian sharpshooter had sensed a weakness. But Sigrun had placed two extra-thick layers of black iron there for just that eventuality. Not a single piece of shrapnel had penetrated to the delicate mana gem within.

“Oby? Time to stop playing. We’ve got something to...”

Two winged shadows swept low above her, a pair of Skyknights flying into the attack. Only when they had passed did she notice the grievous wound on her golem’s belly. The shots to the head had only feinted, distracted Obahyurur from the real danger. The Blackcloak bladesman had then ended the duel with a single stroke, piercing armour plating and cog mechanisms alike in a single thrust. Hydraulic fluid leaked from the rent in the black steel, mingling with puddling rain upon the corrupted earth.

“Oby?”

The silver activation rune on her golem’s chest remained dulled, silent, lifeless.

“Oby...?”

Hot air blasted her face dry as the frigate, its charges stowed at last, moved to disengage. The Skyknights reformed with seamless precision into chase formation, harrying the wounded wooden beast as it turned its bow in cumbersome grace to the west. Sigrun paid none of them any attention.

The rain returned in slimy sheets. She told herself it was only its wetness that coursed down her cheeks.

[Diadems of Promethion]

Hungry stormclouds made no distinction between glistening silver mail and sooty oaken hull as they swallowed the combatants whole. Deafening broadsides receded into muted thunderclaps, then into the steady hammer of raindrop upon rubble and churned mud. Even the pungent acridity of blackpowder soon faded as the corrupted stench of the Necromancer’s legacy reasserted itself.

Only then did Throld emerge from the fennec-hole he’d dug himself in the lee of the unbroken tower, in the vague hope that the frigate’s wrath would pass him by.

“No. Shit.”

A quick pat-down assured himself that he hadn’t broken, singed, or otherwise damaged any part of his person or, Ronus forbid, his clothes. By the end of the week, the cloying mud and greasy downpour would turn him into an undead minion. But for now the slight fever building in the back of his mind stood as testament to his dwarvish constitution and its ability to fight off any plague. To his great surprise, he found himself little worse for the wear. Only a sour aftertaste on the back of his tongue bothered him, caused no doubt by the raw elven magic both sides had flung about with reckless abandon. How could they resort to such irresponsible spell-slinging, without thought to the consequences of the power they unleashed? Better to trust to the science of runes than to flirt with disaster wild and wanton.

“Here I am,” he breathed again, and this time allowed himself to relax at last. Maybe he might survive this expedition with his prize, after all. With the Alerians driven off by the Raiaerans, that just left...

“Don’t move, taleweaver.”

... that maniac dwarf-dam.

“You’re out of shot, lassie,” Throld sighed in world-weary wisdom. Something in the way she spoke her words arrested his attention, though, and he began to turn. “Don’t think that...”

A flash of fire. A crack of thunder. Something molten seared through his right shoulder, and his right cheek hit the mud with enough force to knock the breath from his lungs. Pain, red hot angry pain...

“Don’t think that,” the dwarf-dam echoed in mockery, though the quaver in her voice made it hard to decipher whether she laughed or cried. “Always think you’re so smart, you taleweaver types. Don’t think this. Don’t think that. ‘Strewth.”

Rough hands reached into the pockets of his waistcoat, turning them inside out one by one. Every movement jarred the hole in his torso, sending fresh spears of pain lancing through his mind. All he could think was to keep his nose above the mud and his wound clear of the filth. If the corruption seeped directly into his body, then even he might not last much before falling to a fate far worse than death.

“Next time, taleweaver, remember this. Don’t think I’m such a fanny that I can’t scavenge a cartridge or two from the supplies those Blackcloaks had to leave behind at the ford. Don’t think that I’d spend an entire night’s journey twiddling my thumbs and doing nothing. And don’t think that I wouldn’t be so crass as to shoot you in the back.”

Before he could do much more than mumble a weak protest, she’d found the stone tablet and pulled it free of his auroch-hide coat.

The last thing Throld saw was the dwarf-dam squatting in the mud before his eyes, brandishing her prize before tucking it into the pocket of her smithing apron.

“Mine.”

Her boots splattered him in the face when she turned on her heels.

By then, he lacked the consciousness to care.

[Pinions of Daedalion]

She had what she sought, the ashes of a long-lost muse. Now she could complete her recipe. Maybe, just maybe, it held the secret to the immortality she so sought. Or maybe it didn’t, and she would have to try again. But in that case at least she would be able to cross out this particular lead.

So why did she feel like a forge without flame, so empty inside?

Wisps of steam wafted upwards into the stormy dark, the ground itself sweating from the exertions of combat. The stench of undeath, of filth and rot and despair, choked in her constricted throat like ram meat gone bad. Not for a moment did the rain show any sign of abating, a constant veil of tears for her fallen comrade. Slick rivulets mingled with the accumulated mud and dirt on the golem’s armour, creating patterns of water and metal that dazzled the eye but wrought havoc upon her torment.

“C’mon, Oby. I got what we came for.”

The Blackcloaks had fled, the Raiaerans had left in pursuit, and the taleweaver lay bleeding out in the mud beyond the nearby pillar. She only had to make good her escape. She only had to leave.

“C’mon Oby. Let’s get back to where it doesn’t rain so much.”

Without it to carry her, how long would it take to make the mountain crossing? She’d have to find somewhere safe to sleep at night, some other way to carry her food and supplies, somebody else to stand guard while she did her business, and...

“C’mon, Oby! We need to get you cleaned, and get your arm fixed back together, and check to see if you’ve rusted through, and...”

What if she caught a chill from the filth and the mud and the ice-cold rain? Who would listen to her grouching? Who would bring her rice when she asked for ice, and leave the cloths dripping with water when she demanded a replacement poultice?

“C’mon,” she sniffled, emotion finally getting the better of her stoic demeanour. Grimy moisture cascaded down her cheeks, frigid acid burning away the feverish heat of her tears. Marble tablets slipped from fingers that could no longer feel their weight. Her knees hit the mud. Her elbows followed a heartbeat later.

“C’mon Oby. Stop shamming...”

Bright silver light penetrated her closed eyelids. The hum of a mana gem on low power reverberated below the hammering raindrops. She looked up, to find the gentle glow of Obahyurur’s activation rune driving away the all-encompassing shadows of the night.

“Oby?”

The rune flickered, wavered, came back just a little weaker than before. Maybe if she just replaced the mana gem... maybe if she fiddled around a little bit inside...

Determination replaced despair upon her pinched features. Wiping the back of one grimy hand across her temples, she set to work.

No matter how she hated the fool, she would not abandon her golem.

Not out here.

Not alone.

[Diadems of Promethion]

The world returned in bright light and flashes of colour, and an inaudible jumble of sounds that wouldn’t leave his ears. Annoyed he tried to wave them away, only to find stronger hands than his restraining him to what felt like a soft feather bed. How dare they. Didn’t they know that dwarves could only sleep well on slabs of stone?

More to his surprise, once he settled down they let him be. Perhaps they had some sense after all.

“...”

His lips, parched and feverish, wouldn’t work until they pressed a glass of cold, clear water against them. He nearly spat it all back out, there and then. Why wouldn’t they serve him wine?

“Where...?”

“Winyaurient, master dwarf.” The delicious tenor in his ears melodiously annoyed the underearth out of him. “We doubled back on our sweep after chasing away our dark kin and their flying abomination, wondering why they so blatantly risked our wrath. There we found you, unconscious and bleeding out from a musket wound. As you are their enemy, so you might be our friend, so we took care of you. Thankfully, we have been successful in purging you of Xem’zund’s corruption. The people of stone are hardy indeed.”

“Was... I...”

“Alone?” the elf-prince finished for him. For who could the speaker be but the tall elf who had led the Raiaeran counterattack, Elrohir Felagund, rider of the gryphon Surion and Prince of Tor Elythis. “You were, although there were tracks aplenty. Including an intriguing gait belonging to what might have been an ogre or a troll... But we shall ask you about that later, when we ask you what else you might know about the incursion of our Alerian kin.

“For now, I am told to advise you to sleep well. With your constitution, you will heal within days.”

Lulled by the words, Throld felt his consciousness slipping away from his once more. But he had to ask one last question, to confirm one final fact...

“...”

“I beg your pardon, master dwarf?”

“... Mnem... syne...”

“Your belongings?” Elrohir’s frown carried even through Throld’s drowsy eyelids. “Rest assured, they are...”

I am safe here in this room, Master Throld, a second voice spoke to him in his mind, a pleasant alto that might have belonged to Skald herself. All strength left his limbs as he sank back into the down-feather mattress and pillows.

I am called Calliope, the Wise, the eldest Daughter of Mnemosyne, she told him as he slipped into blissful sleep. And you are Throld Sartet, my Master of Words.

His final impression of the strangely familiar voice in his head was one of joyous laughter.

And thus did the bard replace all the greedy thief’s spoils with lumps of coal!

[Pinions of Daedalion]

The canopy burnt in flaming red, in glimmering silver and glittering gold. The first of the winter’s gales reached in to rip the leaves from their branches, sending them scurrying along to whatever pile of mulch they would call their grave. Overhead, the light of a thousand stars warred with the dark oblivion that threatened to consume them all, diamond dust scattered upon a carpet of black velvet.

Below the priceless foliage raged a battle of a different calibre. A battle between a dwarf-dam and her golem on one side, and a pair of mismatched flesh monstrosities on the other.

The golem, Obahyurur the Unwise, limped into action on a gimp leg. Only one arm hung from its body, holding the other like a club that it swung through the chill air with no shortage of malicious glee. Delicate machine parts flew with every impacting blow like sparks from a tinder into the darkness, but that only served to encourage it further.

Sigrun Kondrat, Mistress of Stone, wheezed mightily as she ejected the spent cartridge from her previous, failed, shot. Her upper lip ran with mucous phlegm, tinted with specks of blood and red, but she paid it little heed in the chaos of combat. The melee had closed to less than twenty paces, and she had only the time to make one shot count before she had to scram.

She fumbled through her pockets for the last of the cartridges she had retrofitted from the Alerian supplies, whistling cheerily as she went. A grunt of effort rammed the wad of black powder and shot into place. She slammed the breech closed, tapping it once to ensure its integrity. Then she forced the broken iron fingers of her left hand to curl around the dragon-belcher's oaken haft, bracing it in the direction of the walking dead grasping at her golem. Her final flourish was to light the fuse with the flint firestarter held in her teeth, counting down beneath her breath as the flame ate away the soaked hempen cord.

The heavens quaked. A leaden fireball lit up the shadows all around as it streaked on an unerring arc towards its target.

The nearest cadaver exploded in a cloud of gory viscera.

“Boom!”

[Philomel]

Thread Title: Master of Words, Mistress of Stone (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?27859-Master-of-Words-Mistress-of-Stone)
Judgment Type: Full Rubric
Participants: Pinions of Daedalion and Diadems of Promethion



As the writer here is the same for both characters, all of Plot and Prose are written and considered together. Character is written separate for each one.

Plot: 24/30

Story- 9/10

From the outset your story is compelling and enthralling. In most ways there was no times of boredom, or when the act of the story lagged, which is quite easy in a sizeable thread. Each post was also full of action and engaging with little lacking in terms of excitement, so therefore a top score in this.

Setting- 8/10

For setting you open well, with a clear description of setting, with even small details of light that really bring the scene to life. You continue this well, with highlighting the other scenes in a similar way. The only thing that really could have been improved on here is a varying use of the five and more senses to show how your characters interact with the setting, whether psychologically or emotionally - however, well done.

Pacing- 7/10

Pacing was more or less well laid out. There was no sense of rushing or it being too slow. The majority of posts were equal in length which is visually pleasing. Some of them could have been a slight bit shorter to make reading of the chunks a little easier and there could have been an extra post or two overall, however it read well in general.



Character: 24/30

Communication- 8/10

Pinions: For your character there is a clear change through her dialogue of Sigrun’s emotions as the thread continues, which is excellent. Her character is shown in her impatience of post 5 with the short sharp sentences. However, in terms of balance, there could have been more speech from this character which could have definitely brought out more of her in person, revealed more. In a sense this thread almost wanted to be a solo from this single perspective.

Diadems: Opposed to Diadems, Throld’s communication was in much better balance in terms of the entire character sections - action and persona included. His speech was clever and divisive, particularly at the end of post 8, and your use of good language helped to portray his character well.


Action-7/10

Pinions: Action in terms of ‘in general’ was well written and clear, however in relation to some NPC characters it did seem a little awkward and confusing. One wanted to know what Sigrun’s true feelings towards Oby were, and her actions seemed to differ towards him post by post. However, all in all well done.

Diadems: Action was simple and forthright, what one might expect from a dwarf. Similarly to Sigrun, sometimes actions were slightly confusing as to their true meaning, and there could have been subtler ones added - for instance habits such as playing with hair - but all in all very telling of the character.


Persona- 9/10

Pinions: In terms of thoughts, the reader only really gets an insight into Sigrun’s head towards the end of the thread, however for the most part Persona is played well. The personal thoughts in post 21 are funny and add a light-heartedness to the piece, with small exclamations.

Diadems: In post 6 the character of Throld is really brought to life in the flash-back scenes. They work particularly excellently for the reader to really get to know your character well. The startling past only grants more empathy towards him to such an extent where you want to get to know him more. In general here, there is no need to try to improve your writing in terms of Persona as it is already so good.



Prose: 22/30

Mechanics- 7/10

There were no visible spelling mistakes, nor any mistakes in sentence structure. The only things it would have been nice to see are more variation on punctuation, with more use of commas and interjections - using semi-colons and colons to make certain parts stand out. A couple of times also (post 21 for example) dialogue was not set on its own line or in its own paragraph, as should be done correctly. However, a brief look over before posting can always help here.

Clarity- 7/10

The previous comments adhering to slight confusions as to the purposes of actions as mentioned in “Action” are not included as a penalty here, as the standard issue of prose was clear. At some points the eloquent language, as beautiful as it is, can become distracting when comparing it to the direct state of the plot. Marks are down here mostly because of this. Though the beautiful words can be a huge benefit in terms of the power of your piece, overall they can disrupt the overall flow and the clarity. However, in this case do not let this comment stop you from treating the reader as an intelligent reader. It is a single comment that can just be made perfect with minor adjustment as to wording.

Technique- 8/10

One single word here: maginificent. The only thing keeping this score from reaching a 10 is that it would have been nice to see a little more use of imagery and metaphor, however overall the language and description truly make this piece one deserving of its score.



Wildcard: 8/10

In a sense of full-on story telling and the power of emotion, this piece captured the heart of the reader and made them want to keep on going. With a minor piece of work this thread could be turned into a short story and submitted to an anthology - this is how impressed this judge was with it.



Final Score: 78/100

Pinions of Daedalion (http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?17465-Pinions-of-Daedalion) receives:

1460 EXP!
220 GP!

Congratulations!


Diadems of Promethian (http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?17515-Diadems-of-Promethion) receives:

1355 EXP!
205 GP!

Congratulations!

[Hysteria]

EXP and gold added!

[Lye]

Congratulations!!!

You have been awarded a http://www.althanas.com/world/images/badges/Judges%20Choice.pngJudge's Choice Awardhttp://www.althanas.com/world/images/badges/Judges%20Choice.png!!!

An additional 20% EXP & GP will also be awarded:

Pinions of Daedalion (http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?17465-Pinions-of-Daedalion) receives:

292 EXP!
44 GP!


Diadems of Promethian (http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?17515-Diadems-of-Promethion) receives:

271 EXP!
41 GP!


These points have been added!